


The Long Voyage

by thehyades



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Love Triangles, M/M, No Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Burn, and tom as a baker bc he totally would be, playing it fast and loose with the historical accuracies ngl, will as a bookworm bc he totally would be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 54,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23110240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehyades/pseuds/thehyades
Summary: Here he is again, standing in the middle of the train platform, gazing at Will like the lovestruck fool he is. He has to say goodbye again but he can’t, his heart will splinter if he does and he will have no hope of ever recovering from it.Or in another life, Tom is thirteen and Will is sixteen when he moves to Tom’s whimsical little village in the English countryside. It’s a simple yet merry life until war breaks out and duty calls thousands of men to fight for their country but Tom is still too young. The years pass, the war goes on and it becomes too painful to see his friend and his older brother go off to battle in France again and again. It's even harder when Tom realises he's in love with someone whose bound to be a soldier as long as it drags on.From 1913 to 1921, this is a chronicle of war, brotherhood, the intoxicating rush of first love and the paralysing heartbreak that often follows.
Relationships: Joseph Blake/Lauri, Tom Blake/Max Baumer, Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 66
Kudos: 79





	1. 1913 - Tom

**Author's Note:**

> hi lovelies,
> 
> the title is adapted from a line in the jumblies, an old english nursery (scho sings it to that baby in the ruined town), _for the sky is dark and the voyage is long'_ also, there's no period typical homophobia bc that shit is depressing and everyone deserves to be happy. btw i'm not a german/french speaker i used google translate so if u do happen to speak either of those and know the correct translations please lmk.
> 
> aaaaand find me on tumblr: greatachilles (come and cry w/ me about blake and scho!)
> 
> disclaimer: i don't own 1917 or any of the characters, i'm just sad about the film and this is me dealing with it so leave me alone u greedy corporations!
> 
> okay i'll shut up now x

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer ends, Will arrives in Rainford on the cool autumn wind. Tom struggles to communicate with a new Austrian boy.

<...>  
 _sic erit; haeserunt tenues in corde sagittae,_  
 _et possessa ferus pectora versat Amor._  
 _Cedimus, an subitum luctando accendimus ignem?_  
 _cedamus! leve fit, quod bene fertur, onus._  
<...>  
  
Thus it will be; slender arrows are lodged in my heart,  
and Love vexes the chest that it has seized  
Shall I surrender or stir up the sudden flame by fighting it?  
I will surrender - a burden becomes light when it is carried willingly.

➼ **OVID, Amores I, 2**

* * *

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ 

* * *

**1 9 1 3**

* * *

**August**

It is yet another warm and wet summer in the quaint little village of Rainford. The population is no bigger than four hundred. Five hundred if you count the cows and sheep. Rainford has an obscene number of sheep. 

Once, Tom dreamt the sheep had learnt English and they had had enough of their human overlords so they ran a _coup d’état_ (it’s some fancy French phrase he learnt, Tom saw it in one of his grandfather’s stuffy books on some big revolution in France a long, long time ago. Granddad says it means _the government is useless, let’s take them down_ or something like that). In his dream— well, nightmare — the whole village was wiped out — hold on. He’s gone on a bit of a tangent there. Joe says he does that a lot. What was he on about?

Oh. Rainford, right. 

Tom was born and raised in Rainford, he knows everyone in this tiny place and everyone knows him. It's both a blessing and a curse. 

The blessing: everyone knows everyone, everyone has known everyone for generations and because of it, Rainford is the safest place this side of Europe. 

The curse: everyone knows everyone, everyone has known everyone for generations and because of it, Rainford is the most boring place this side of Europe. 

Not to mention, people are nosey. Mum always complains about it. Especially, Mrs. Schofield on Asher Lane. _Biggest gossip in the world that one,_ Mum will say as she kneads the dough or hangs up the washing, _doesn’t know how to keep her beak out of people’s business, I mean, if Catherine Crabtree wants to run off and wed that weird old man, it’s her choice!_

Joe will roll his eyes and whisper to Tom, _Mum's the second biggest gossip in the world then._

Tom will try to stifle his laugh as they mouth along to Mum’s annoyed rant about Mrs. Schofield. They must have heard it a thousand times. 

On a particularly warm day in late August, he tries to stifle his laughter as they carry baskets packed with wet and freshly washed clothes to the back garden for drying. Myrtle, the family dog, lies on the patio and watches them. 

“Y’know, last Sunday, she came up to me after mass and said she heard your granddad might have TB,” Mum says as they start hanging everything up on the clothing lines, “the bloody cheek of it! I told her your granddad is strong as an ox and that she should worry about her wonky hip.” 

Joe finishes up pegging the bedding sheets and with Mum on the other side, he imitates the way she flings her hands in the air when she’s annoyed and mouths along to her rant. Tom just about covers his mouth to hide his laughter but he drops a pair of wet trousers on the grass. There’s a small muddy stain on it but he quickly scrubs it off and throws it on the line. 

“Tom,” Mum says, pushing the clothes aside to look at her youngest son, “is your uniform washed?”

Tom groans at the mention of school. The glorious summer holidays are ending and he returns to Rainford Hill Secondary School in three days. It’s quite disheartening. 

“No,” he says to which Mum throws him a displeased look, “I’ll wash ‘em in the next load.”

“What next load? Do you think we live in Buckingham Palace?” Mum asks as she picks up a large coat from the basket, “I’m not doing another load until next weekend and school re-opens on Tuesday. No,” she shakes her head, “after you’re done with this, you’re grabbing your uniform, washing it yourself and you’re drying it yourself. You need to learn to take care of your things, pet.”

“What?” Tom’s eyebrows rise. “But I can’t, I’m meant to be meeting Max in the Square soon.”

He doesn’t mention that he is also meant to be meeting Killy, his mate since nursery, because Mum hates him. Actually, hate is a strong word. Mum just doesn’t like Killy because she thinks he’s a “bloody loose cannon, mark my words that boy is going to end up in jail one day!” What Mum doesn’t understand is that Rainford is boring and Killy is the only one who knows how to have fun around here.

Not to mention Tom has seen how Mum spends hours scrubbing the clothes clean in the kitchen and he doesn’t have the time or the energy for it. These last three days of the holidays are crucial. It’s true freedom until he’s back at school, shackled to a desk for the next nine months. 

Mum pauses and glances at him, “Max? Who is that?”

The pegged clothing dances in the summer wind. Joe dips under the dozen or so hanging shirts to peg the rest of the clothes up on a free line. 

“He's the Baumers' son,” Joe says, stealing a few pegs from Mum’s basket, “they moved into the Pinewoods’ house a few months ago, remember?”

“Right,” Mum nods, “yeah, the Germans—”

“Australian,” Joe says.

" _Austrian,_ " Tom corrects, throwing a heavy bedsheet onto the clothing line and spreading it out so it doesn't crinkle. "They're from Austria-Hungary."

"What's the difference?" Joe asks just to be annoying.

"Maybe, they're two different countries?"

Joe continues to be annoying, "I don't get it."

Tom throws a wet sock at him but Joe dodges it easily.

"Are you throwing clothes about?" Mum demands from the other side of the fluttering bedsheet.

"No," Tom and Joe say in unison.

Max and his family (his parents and an older cousin named Lauri) moved to Rainford at the beginning of Summer and it was the talk of the village for weeks. Like his father, Max was born and raised in Austria but his mother is English. Max told him his father worked as a lawyer in Vienna and returned to England be a beer-man or barman or — was it a barrister? It definitely began with B. Max’s father commutes to London while his mother — actually, Tom doesn't know what she does. Maybe she's a housewife like Tom's own mother. 

Tom rises onto his tip toes to peg Granddad’s favourite woolly jumper onto the line. Joe says his growth spurt is coming but he’s fourteen in almost three months and there is no sign of any growth spurt. If it wasn’t for Jonny Braddock, he would be the smallest lad in school.

Mum says, "you're not seeing that German boy—”

"Austrian," Tom says.

"I don't care, you're not going anywhere until your uniform is washed.” 

Tom groans, "fine, can I call his house phone and ask him to come here instead?"

He sees his mother nod through the bedsheet. 

"Go on, pet," Mum says.

Tom grins and runs into the house. 

* * *

**September**

There are a lot of things that annoy Tom about being back at school. The early hours, the long days, the boring subjects but what it is even more annoying is the fact he has to wait for Joe in the school courtyard every day so he can walk home. 

Mum heard one story about the time Jonny wandered into the woods when walking home for the first time. Now, Mum is convinced that will be Tom’s fate because he fell into a ditch _once_ when he was seven and it was Joe’s fault. Joe had been making him laugh too much with his silly faces and Tom tripped on a rock and fell.

Tom bids his friends goodbye, ignoring their snickers as they wander why he has to wait for his older brother to go home. Killy even laughs and runs off to play footy in the nearby park. Although, Max does wait with him but that might be because the other kids tease him about his Austrian accent and Tom doesn't. He has stuck to Tom's side since school started a week ago. He doesn't seem interested in making other friends. Then again, that could be because they all tease him for being Austrian. His English isn't perfect so he often reverts to German or French when he can't be bothered to think up a sentence in English.

He reverts to German right now as he climbs up onto the picnic table in the open courtyard and sits next to Tom. Tom has his elbow propped on his knee and his chin in the palm of his hand. The most annoying part of waiting for Joe is that he takes his time. He seems hellbent on punishing Tom for their mother’s paranoia. 

" _Wo ist dein bruder?"_ Max says as he cards a hand through his floppy blond hair. 

Tom sighs, "English, Max."

Max rolls his eyes. He pauses, frowning as he tries to translate the sentence in his head. "Where…" he starts, "where...brother?"

"Oh, where is my brother?"

Max nods.

"I don't know, he should be out soon," he says, glancing out at the courtyard and the many students milling about. "He always takes the piss."

"What?" Max looks more confused than ever. " _Die Engländer machen keinen sinn._ "

Tom waves a hand in the air, "it means—”

The sound of Joe's distinct laughter cuts him off. Tom turns in his seat on the picnic table and finally spots Joe leaving the writing block with at least half a dozen other students. Joe is always surrounded by people. There is a certain spark to him that pulls people in like a moth to a flame. Tom doesn't know where Joe inherited that spark because no one in their family has it. 

_Natural born charisma_ , Granddad once explained when Tom asked why Joe was so popular at school. _And his good looks,_ Granddad added with a smug smile, _got that off me._

Joe's good looks are definitely a huge part of his charm. Joe is with his usual crowd, about six of them in total who circle around Joe like he is the sun. Sometimes, Tom thinks Joe might be the sun in human form. Everyone always gravitates to him. Tom ought to learn how he does that.

Tom taps Max’s shoulder and points to his older brother. “He’s here,” he says. 

Tom and Max hop off the table. It’s only then that he notices a new addition to Joe’s entourage. A tall, slim boy walks along with them at the edge of the group. He holds a heavy book in one hand and he holds onto the strap of his book bag on his shoulder. He doesn’t seem interested in the loud conversation about God knows what, seeming content with simply observing the group. He’s not just new to the group, Tom realises, he’s new to the school. Tom has never seen him around before and in a village this small you often see the same face at least once a day. 

“I’ve got some errands to do but I’ll see you tonight!” Joe tells his friends before they split off. 

The other five head off down the narrow path to the river but the newbie stays with Joe. 

Joe grins, slings an arm around the boy’s shoulder and pulls him close. He mumbles something that causes the corner of the boy’s mouth to flit up in the faintest smile. He lets go of the boy and they walk over to Tom and Max. 

“You took your time,” Tom says when they finally reach them. “Max and I have plans y’know.”

“Like what, little brother?” Joe says with a raised eyebrow, “an important business meeting?”

Tom’s eyes narrow, “no, we’re helping Mum package the cherry jam for a delivery that’s due in a few days.” He frowns, “why are you not being forced to do it? How did you manage to get out of it?”

The Blakes have run their cherry farm for generations. _All the way back to King George IV,_ Granddad likes to remind them whenever Tom and Joe complain about their backs hurting from picking cherries all day, _it’s our way of life!_

Eventually the farm will be Joe’s and he can carry on their way of life. Tom is glad of it, it’s the only perk to being the youngest one. He loves the farm and he loves picking cherries with the whole family when it’s harvest season but he doesn’t want to do it for the rest of his life. There is a whole world to see. 

Joe shrugs, that easy grin returning, “I’m her favourite.”

Tom snorts, “Myrtle is her favourite.”

Myrtle is his favourite too. She’s a big, fluffy St Bernard Grandad brought home one day when Tom was six and he doesn’t think he’s exaggerating when he says Myrtle is the best dog in the world. She’s the reason Tom is always so eager to head home when school finishes. 

“Oh, true, Myrtle is Mum’s favourite,” Joe says, “I’ve got a job mate, I gotta do the paper round every morning before school and after school. Why do you think I’ve been waking up at five a.m? It’s not for my health.”

Tom shrugs, “I don’t know, you’re weird. I don’t really question the things you do anymore.”

Joe stares at Tom with a blank look, then he laughs and pats the new boy’s chest. “Cheekylittle sod, isn’t he?” He says, “this is Tom, my baby brother.”

“I’m not a baby,” Tom huffs, “I’m thirteen— that’s a man in some cultures.”

“Which culture?” Joe counters.

Tom flounders for an answer when the newbie speaks up. 

“Jewish,” the boy says, “when a Jewish boy turns thirteen he becomes a bar mitzvah and they have many of the same rights and responsibilities of a Jewish adult but it doesn’t necessarily mean he is an adult in the legal sense.”

Everyone stares at him and he seems to squirm under their gazes. He shifts the book from one hand to the other and looks away, his wavy, caramel brown hair flutters in the afternoon wind. 

“…and this fountain of knowledge here is William Schofield,” Joe says, glancing at Tom when he reveals the boy’s full name.

“Will,” the newbie says, “I prefer Will.”

Tom’s eyebrows rise. “Wait, Schofield like Mrs. Schofield? Are you related?” 

The newbie nods, “uh, yes, she’s my grandmother.”

Tom laughs and the boy — Will, he reminds himself — throws a confused glance at him. 

“What is it?” Will says.

Joe shakes his head, “it’s nothing mate, it’s just…your grandmother has a bit of a reputation in the village.”

“What kind?”

“Gossip,” Tom says, “your grandmother owns and runs the rumour mill in Rainford.”

“Oh.” Will blinks, then scratches the back of his neck with his free hand, “I know. I would tell her to stop but my grandmother isn’t someone who listens…”

“No, no, please don’t,” Joe says, resting his hand on Will’s arm, “your grandmother is the only person who brings any excitement to the village. She must be involved in at least half the marriages in Rainford. It’s truly remarkable.”

Tom jolts when Max pats his shoulder. Tom looks at him.

“ _Qui est-il_?” Max asks. He has switched back to French. French or German, it doesn’t matter. Tom has trouble understanding him either way but the confused look on his face tells Tom he is curious about Will. 

“ _Mon nom est_ _Will_ ,” the new boy says, “ _je suis nouveau au village_.”

Max blinks up at him, his eyes wide, “ _tu parles français?”_

Max looks like he's just found water in the desert. They all stare at Will again and he seems uncomfortable with all the attention on him.

Will shifts the book around his hands again. “ _Oui, tu ne parles pas anglais?”_

“ _Un peu…mais ces gens ne parlent ni français ni allemand_ ,” Max says, throwing his hands up,“ _sont-ils stupide? C'est vraiment ennuyeux!_ ”

Tom catches something that sounds like stupid. He bets Max is calling them stupid. He’s been in England for nearly three months now and he doesn’t seem any happier about it or better. Tom doesn’t understand why. If his family moved to a different country he would be so excited and happy to meet new people and explore foreign lands.

Max continues, “ _tu es la seule personne civilisée que j'ai rencontrée._ ”

Will doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. His mouth hangs open for a few seconds before hesnaps it shut and says, “uh, _merci?_ ”

“What are you two nattering about?” Joe asks.

Will presses his mouth into a fine line. “Just introducing myself,” he says, “are we going now?”

Joe says, “yeah, I’ve gotta take these two home then I gotta do my paper round but once I’m done I’ll come to yours and we can head to the castle.”

“Which castle?” Tom glances between the older boys, “what are you doing?”

Rainford has two castles. The main one is Rainford Castle in the centre of the village or the Square as everyone calls it. It’s old and gigantic, as if it was pulled straight out of a fairy tale, with its imposing stone towers and battlements. The whole village was built around it bit by bit over the centuries and now it’s a historical landmark they turned into a museum Mayor Leslie insists they keep in pristine condition. 

The second one is Danecroft Castle in the outskirts of Rainford. Where Rainford Castle is majestic and well-kept, Danecroft lays in a state of ruin and decay. Grandad said it used to be a holiday home for some prince but then he got bored and gave it to the monks but then vikings came and killed all the monks and now everyone is convinced its haunted. Danecroft Castle is the most interesting thing in this village and everyone is scared of it. Well, everyone except Killy who goes to Danecroft every weekend like it’s his second home but Killy doesn’t count. Killy isn’t a normal person. He exists in his own mad world. 

Tom has wanted to go up to Danecroft ever since he learnt about it but he knows Mum would kill him if ever went anywhere near it. One of these days he will have to beg Joe to take him.

“Danecroft,” Joe says, “gonna have a little fun, watch the sunset.”

Tom opens his mouth, “can I—”

“ _No_ ,” Joe cuts him off. 

Tom pouts, “why not?”

“It’s strictly sixteen and over,” he says, “and last time I checked you were thirteen, Tom—”

“I’ll be fourteen soon!”

“Yeah, in December,” he says, “that’s still quite a while away, now, c’mon, let’s get you two home. I don’t want Mum blaming me for missing the delivery deadline.”

Ever since Joe’s seventeenth birthday in July when Mum told him he could go now take the truck down to London for deliveries Joe has gotten bossier than usual. He has such a pompous air about him you would think he’d been told he was the next in line to the throne. 

Joe and Will start walking down the steep slope to the school’s main entrance, wrought iron gates between a pair of great beech trees. It may be mid-September but they still have their leaves. Summer always cling to the village for another month before autumn turns the world every shade of orange and red. 

Tom stays by the picnic table with Max giving him a confused look, probably wondering why he hasn’t moved yet. 

_“Was machen sie_?” Max says, switching back to German.

Joe and Will notice they aren’t following and they pause at the bottom of the slope to look up at them.

Tom raises his chin and tries to imitate his mother’s Serious Tone when she’s particularly annoyed at them. 

“If—if,” Tom starts, “if you don’t take us with you to Danecroft I’ll tell Mum you’re going there. I’ll tell her it’s you’re favourite spot in the world.”

It’s a bluff. He would never tell but desperate times and that. This isn’t fair. He wants to see Danecroft. Everybody else has, why shouldn’t he? 

Will and Max glance between the two brothers. He expects Joe to glare at him and concede because it’s a perfect threat. Mum will ban Joe from leaving the house for at least a month and he can say goodbye to his paper round and any social life.

To his annoyance, Joe just grins and says, “you tell Mum anything about Danecroft and I’ll tell Mum you’re best mates with Killy.”

“I’m not!” Tom’s eyes widen, “and — and you wouldn’t.”

He really isn’t best mates with Killy, it’s just Killy is the only one who knows how to have fun around here. If Mum finds out Tom might as well start preparing for his funeral.

“Well, we’re now blackmailing each other, little brother,” Joe says, still wearing that wide grin, “if you raise the stakes be prepared for the risks.”

Granddad gave Joe some really old book called _The Art of War_ and now Joe thinks he’s a military mastermind. Tom tried to read it but it’s really boring. He gave up after one page. There’s no war so he doesn’t get the point of it. 

“Fine,” Tom pouts again and says. “You win.”

He stomps down the slope with Max trailing behind him. The four boys walk past the iron gates and start the journey home. Max jogs over to Will and continues their earlier conversation in French. It’s the happiest Tom’s seen him, it’s the excited look in his hazel-brown eyes as he stares up at Will. 

Joe falls back to walk with Tom. 

“When did the newbie move to Rainford?” Tom asks, watching Max and Will. 

“Yesterday,” Joe tells him as he fishes a chocolate bar from the inside of his blazer pocket and waves it in Tom’s face, “want one?”

Tom gasps, “yeah!” 

He tries to reach for it but Joe snatches it back.

“You can have it if you promise not to say a word about me going up to Danecroft tonight,” he says.

Tom says, “you already threatened to tell Mum about Killy and it worked. Why have you moved to bribery? Does that Art of War book say confusion is the most lethal method?”

Joe smiles, “I’d ask how you got to be so cheeky but I know it’s me.”

He ruffles Tom’s curly, dark hair. Tom bats his hand away. He doesn’t know how many times he needs to remind Joe to stop doing that because he’s not a baby. 

“I’m not a baby,” he says again and he will keep saying it until he understands.

“Sure,” Joe says, handing him the chocolate, “by the way, I wasn’t going to tell Mum about your thing either. I know he’s your best mate.”

Tom frowns in disgust. “He’s _not_ my best mate.”

Killy is the kind of person you can take in doses. An hour at lunch every at school is enough for Tom. Possibly more on the weekends if Killy’s idea for some fun is good. 

Tom grins up at his brother as he unwraps the chocolate bar and takes a bite out of it. “So,” Tom says with the chocolate still in his mouth, “where’s the newbie from?”

He’s not from Essex, not with that posh accent. 

“Berkshire,” Joe says as they turn onto a narrow street, “but he was at boarding school.”

“Fancy,” Tom swallows down the chocolate, “which one?”

“Eton. I know,” Joe says when he sees Tom’s raised eyebrows. 

“Wow,” he glances over at Will who is nodding along as Max speaks. Who knew Max was so talkative? He must have been starved for conversation in the last two and a half months. He frowns and glances back at his brother, “he left a fancy school like Eton to come to…Rainford? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Joe says with a shrug, “I only met him today, I’m not gonna ask for his life story am I?”

Tom tries to shove Joe away but he doesn’t budge. He’s too strong. It’s because he’s been playing rugby since he was fifteen and now he’s the star player on the village’s rugby team. Tom is too young to join but the second he turns fifteen he’s trying out. 

“Keep trying, little brother,” Joe says, “you might be able to when you’re older.”

“I’d rather talk to the people who don’t even speak English,” Tom says and leaves Joe to walk alone to join Max and Will further down the street. 

Joe’s laughter rings out in the warm afternoon.

* * *

**October**

Since Max met someone else who can speak French his mood has lifted and he’s excited to wait for Joe and Will at the end of each school day. It aggravates Tom for some reason. Max used to pester Tom with everything question under the sun in German or French. Tom was doing well in getting him to speak English every now and then but since William Schofield came he seems to have given up on that front. He’ll never learn if he doesn’t try and he’ll just alienate everyone in town. 

On their walks home, Max only speaks to Will and Tom has even heard him laugh a few times. Tom tells himself to be glad Max has made a friend but then Joe finds him pouting in the living room one rainy Saturday. Max is meant to come over tomorrow to do their homework together but Tom doesn’t see the point when Max refuses to speak any English. 

Joe has just come back from a regular delivery of their cherries down to London and a few other nearby towns. Myrtle greets him with a wagging tail and follows him into the living room. He slumps down on the sofa with a sigh and strokes Myrtle’s fur. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Joe says. He looks at Myrtle and puts on a silly voice, “what’s wrong with him? Why is he so grumpy today, M?”

Myrtle wags her tail faster in response and Tom considers not saying anything but he can’t take it anymore. “The other kids will never stop teasing Max if he doesn’t learn English but how is he going to learn English if he only ever speaks French with William bloody Schofield!”

Joe blinks, staying quiet for a few moments as he takes in the information. Finally, he says, “why don’t you learn some French or Italian or whatever that kid speaks? He probably feels lonely, Will is the only one outside his family he can speak to properly. If you learn whatever language he speaks it might encourage him to learn English.”

“That…” Tom says, turning to face his brother, “is a brilliant idea! You are brilliant!”

Joe raises his hands, “don’t thank me, thank Sun Tzu.” 

“Who?” 

“You really oughta read more, Tom,” Joe says, slumping further down the sofa and closing his eyes. 

“Please, you read one book—” 

“Three—”

“—and you think you’re Shakespeare,” Tom says as he stands up, “right, I’m off!” 

“Off where?” Joe calls from the living room when Tom runs into the hallway to grab his coat off the hooks by the door. 

“Library!” Tom shouts as he shrugs on his coat.

“Oh, Tom, you off to the Square?” Mum shouts from upstairs.

Tom pauses, he sighs and turns around. Mum stands at the top of the stairs, dressed in her flowery apron with her curly blonde hair pulled up into a messy bun as she carries balled up blankets in her arms. 

“What do you want me to get?” Tom asks. 

“Honey and flour from the market.”

“Okay.”

“Aren’t you going to write it down?”

“I’ll remember,” he says. The last time he checked the clock on the mantle in the living room, it was one o’clock. The library closes at four and it only takes fifteen minutes to reach the Square so he should have plenty of time. 

“Supper is at six! Don’t be late!” Mum reminds him as he shuts the door. 

Tom pauses once again on the stone steps by his front door to put his hand out and test how heavy the rain is. It’s light, light enough that he won’t be soaking when he gets to the library. 

↮

The Square has everything to meet the village’s needs. Need groceries? _Mr. Hemming's Butchery_ has a good range of meat and the market near the park has lots of fresh fish, bread, vegetables and fruits.  Fancy a bite? _Green Brew_ is the quaint cafe next to the duck pond that does the best Victoria sponge cake. Need a drink and a dance? _The Round Table_ is the pub by the statue of a fat man, where half the village gathers for a raucous time over a few pints of beer.

Peace and knowledge? Rainford Library is the place. Need a bed for the night? _The Round Table_ always has a room. Do you miss God? St. Christopher’s Church will help you find him. Need to be transported to a time before yours? Get lost in the majestic halls of the Rainford Castle. Does your wife need cheering up? Get yourself a beautiful bouquet from _Floral Flora’s_. Fancy some new clothes? _Strut_ has great fashion at low, low prices. The Square has everything. 

Tom walks into Rainford Library, it’s a small yet tall building positioned between _Floral Flora’s_ and St. Christopher’s Church. Tom only ever goes inside to research for homework and even he leaves within minutes. It’s too quiet and stuffy and he doesn’t like how Mrs. Hubert, the head librarian, acts like it’s her sacred kingdom. There’s not many people inside, mostly old people reading newspapers or shuffling mindlessly between aisles. Tom hides behind some furniture and pillars to avoid Mrs. Hubert. She might— okay, she definitely hates Tom because of an incident last year with Killy that had nothing to do with him. Killy was banned from the library and Tom escaped with his last warning. It’s best if Mrs. Hubert doesn’t know he’s here at all.

Tom has never seen anyone under the age of fifty in here, that is until he walks up the winding, spiralling staircase to the second floor and he sees none other than William Schofield. He was trying to find the Languages aisle or any aisle that deals with foreign languages that might help him learn French and he ended up in a serene, snug corner of the library. It’s furnished with a cushy sofa; a cup of hot tea, scones and piles of books sits on the low coffee table and an ample armchair Granddad would steal if he ever saw it. 

Will looks cosy on the sofa, an open notebook in his lap and another book in his hands as he reads. Tom tilts his head to the side to get a better look at the title but Will’s large hand is covering it. Tom stays still, watching him for a moment longer than necessary. He doesn’t really see Will outside of school, he normally just walks home with him, Joe and Max and they part ways. Sometimes Joe will go over to Will’s or they will go straight to Danecroft after school but he doesn’t make much of an effort to leave his house. Maybe this is where he goes whenever he isn’t at home or school. 

Will takes a pen he tucked behind his ear and scribbles a few lines down on his notebook. He just looks so at home surrounded by all these books. A large part of his fascination, Tom realises, is due to the fact Will is wearing a cobalt blue, knitted jumper. It looks soft to touch and warm to wear. He’s only seen Will in the dreary grey uniform of their secondary school and it’s such a striking sight to see him in colour. 

Tom steps forward, the floorboards creak in response and Will’s head snaps up. Surprise flickers across his face when he sees it’s Tom. 

Tom offers him a friendly wave of his hand. “Hello, Will.”

Will’s surprise morphs into confusion as his eyebrows knit together. “Uh, hello, Tom.” He glances around, “what…what are you doing here?”

Tom feels a little offended at his confusion actually. Is it that strange for Tom to be in a library? Yes, it is but there’s no need to look so shocked about it. 

“I’m looking for a French dictionary,” he says, stepping closer to the sofa, “do you know where that would be?”

If he’s going to learn a language he would rather learn French. France is the first place he wants to visit when he goes travelling. France or the United States. He’ll flip coin on the day.

“Yes,” Will closes the notebook in his lap and says, “in the References section downstairs.”

Oh, no. If he goes perusing downstairs Mrs. Hubert will see him. He rubs his hands together, “listen, you wouldn’t mind going to grab me a French dictionary would you? It’s just…Mrs. Hubert isn’t my biggest fan.”

“Why?” He asks, his eyebrows pulling together again.

“It’s a…” he shakes his head as he figures out how to explain without sounding like a psychopath by association,“it’s a whole thing…Killy, y’know Killy, yeah?”

“Do you mean Peter Kilgour? The…” he pauses, giving himself a moment to search for the right word, “…eccentric ginger boy in your class?”

“Yeah—”

“He’s your best friend, isn’t he?”

Tom groans. “I don’t know why everyone thinks— _no_ , he’s not. Killy’s been banned from the library for life because he was burning holes into the books with matchsticks and almost set the whole place on fire.”

And Tom was only with him in the first place because he was trying to stop him but somehow he was named as an accomplice and almost banned himself. Mum had to bribe Mrs. Hubert with free cherry jam for a year to stop her from calling the police and banning Tom. 

Will’s eyes widen, “right…and, why do you want a French dictionary?” 

Tom stuffs his hands into his trouser pockets and shrug, “I want to learn French.” He taps the leg of the coffee table with his foot and glances up at the ceiling, “I guess…I don’t know, Max always looks so happy when he’s speaking French with you I thought it would be nice if I learnt too so he wouldn’t feel lonely.” He looks at Will,“…and Joe said it would encourage him to learn English too.”

“Yes, that’s a great idea,” he nods, “and it might save me from having my ear talked off.”

Will’s lips quirk up at that and it takes Tom a few seconds to realise Will is joking. It startles a laugh out of him. 

“Exactly,” Tom says, returning Will’s gentle smile. Maybe William Schofield isn’t just sombre looks and sad dark eyes after all. “It’s a win, win.”

“But you can’t learn a language only using dictionaries,” he says, “it would improve your vocabularyif you already knew the language but without some prior knowledge or understanding of its structure it’s pointless.”

Tom’s shoulders deflate, “oh, I guess you’re right.”

He’s such an idiot, he really thought—

“I can teach you,” Will says.

Tom straightens and walks over to the sofa to sit down on its arm. “Really?” He says.

Will chews the inside of his cheek, then says, “yes, I don’t mind, if it will get Max to finally learn English. I’m fluent, I can teach you enough that you can have some basic conversation with Max.”

Tom’s face breaks out into a bright grin. “That would be brilliant! Let’s do that!” He glances around at all the books on the coffee table and on the sofa, “can we start now? Are you busy?”

“Yes, we can,” Will says, closing the book in his hand, “no, I’m not busy, I was doing some annotation. I can continue later—”

“Annotation? What does that mean?”

“I was making notes on this,” Will shows him the cover of the book he had been reading. 

_Songs of Innocence and Experience._ It looks like one of those old, prissy books Granddad would love and Joe would pretend to have read. 

“What’s it about?” Tom’s nose scrunches up, “Why are you reading songs? They’re meant to be sung.”

Will lets out a faint chuckle. He says, “it’s a collection of twenty-six poems intended to explore the two contrary states of the human soul.” 

“Contrary?”

“Opposite,” Will says.

“Oh, and what are they?”

“What?”

“The two contrary states of the human soul,” Tom says, quite curious now. 

“Uh, the innocent, pastoral world of childhood,” Will says, organising the messy books into a neat pile on the table as he says, “against an adult world of corruption and repression.” 

Tom’s eyes narrow. “Sounds…depressing mate,” he says, placing an elbow on his thigh and leaning forward to look at the other books Will has on the table. Most of them are in French or Latin with only one or two in English. “Is this all poetry, then?” 

Will nods.

He looks at Will then, despite how gloomy it is out, daylight still floods into this quiet corner from the huge, arched windows before the sofa. He wasn’t close enough before or he didn’t look at Will long enough but he realises Will’s eyes are blue. They aren’t the same bright blue like Tom’s but a deeper, darker shade like the depths of the ocean. 

“Do you want to be a poet or somethin’?” Tom asks, picking up a book by someone called Rumi. 

“Oh God, no, I don’t have the talent for that,” Will says, “I simply like to read and, well, sometimes translate them.”

“Translate ‘em into what?”

“French to English, English to French, Latin to French and so on.”

It is Tom’s turn to look confused. It sounds like torture to him. “Why?”

“I like it and it’s a good way to practice my French and Latin,” he says with a shrug. He puts his notebook and _Songs of Experience and Innocence_ onto the coffee table, “I’ve done enough for today, do you want to start the lessons now?”

Tom grins, “yes, please.”

“Great,” Will stands up, “I’m going to grab a few books from downstairs that will help and we get it on with it.”

Tom throws himself down onto the sofa. “Sweet,” he says, folding his arms behind his head and settling into the comfy cushions properly. 

Will teaches him the most basic words and phrases and their proper pronunciation and Tom leaves the library excited to show Max his new found skills. He gets the chance to show it off the next day when Max comes over to his house to work on their homework together. 

When the door opens and Max is standing on other side with a sullen expression and his book bag in hand, Tom greets him. 

“ _Bienvenue, Max,”_ he says, remembering Will’s feedback on his enunciation, “ _comment ça va?”_

Max stares. “ _Quoi? Tu viens de parler français?”_

He said _what?_ And _French_ at the end there but Tom has no clue what any of the middle bit means. 

“ _Oui, j'apprends le français,”_ he says, talking slowly to make sure he gets the words right. _Yes, I’m learning French._ If this is the headache Max has to go through every time he tries to speak English, Tom doesn’t blame him from resisting to learn.

He takes out the note Will translated for him in French. He holds a finger out as he unfolds it and starts reading. 

“ _Je — j’_ _apprends parce que je veux te parler,”_ he pauses, convinced he is butchering Max’s language but he pushes through, _“mais seulement si tu apprends l'anglais aussi.” I’m learning because I want to talk to you but only if you learn English too._

Max’s smile is luminous as he nods, “ _oui, d’accord!” Yes, okay!_

Tom smiles back and for the first time it feels like Max is really seeing him. 

↮

Max’s reaction was so heartfelt and bright, Tom goes looking for Will at school. He searches the courtyard at lunch the next day. Like always, Joe is surrounded by his entourage but oddly enough Will isn’t there. 

“I don’t know where he is,” Joe says when Tom asks him, “he doesn’t come out at lunch.”

Tom’s first guess at Will’s whereabout is correct. He’s in the school library, which is really just a small room with four book shelves. He’s the only one there, sitting on one of the round tables as he writes in that notebook of his and glances back and forth from the book in his hand. It’s odd to see him surrounded by books in his school uniform, he half-expected Will to be wearing that knitted jumper.

Tom slams his hands on the desk and Will almost falls out of his chair. He stares at Tom with wide eyes.

“Are you a vampire, mate?” Tom says as Will picks up the books that fell to the floor, “or one of those mythical creatures that burst into flame if they’re not in a certain place?”

Will piles each book on top of the other. “What?”

“If you’re not in a library at least once in the day will you burst into flames?” Tom asks with his cheekiest grin, “oh, I know, did you sell your soul for all the knowledge in the world but the devil forget to mention you have to learn it so now you practically live in the library?”

Will looks at him. He chews the inside of his cheek, a habit Tom has noticed he does when he’s not sure what to say, which is often. 

“I don’t live in the library,” Will says, flicking through the pages of a hefty book filled with weird symbols. 

“What’s that?” He asks. 

“Sumerian,” Will says, tucking a pen behind his ear, “it’s the oldest written language in history. It was spoken until 2000 B.C.”

“Are you learning another dead language?” Tom asks. Will has to be the oddest person he’s ever met. “Why?”

Maybe he doesn’t want to speak anyone or maybe he wants to talk with the dead but — Will doesn’t look like a witch but aren’t witches women? Tom knows witches aren’t real, no matter how many times Killy tries to scare him — hold on, he’s gone on a bit of a tangent again. 

“If Sumerian is the oldest written language in the world then it would have the oldest written poetry,” Will tells him, “like the Epic of Gilgamesh. It’s the earliest surviving great work of literature and I’d like to read it in its original language.” He shuts the thick book and glances up at Tom, “did you want something?”

Tom blinks. He had almost forgotten why he even came in the first place. It’s such a striking sight whenever Will speaks about poetry or translation he seems to come alive, his gentle voice becomes firmer and the melancholy look in his deep blue eyes disappears for a moment. 

“Oh, right,” he says. “Max was really happy when I spoke to him in French and I want to keep learning so can you keep teaching me?”

“Uh, sure,we can do it at the library in the Square unless you’re still scared of Mrs. Hubert then we can find some—”

“I’m not scared of her,” Tom says, “she’s a hundred or something stupid like that. She just doesn’t like me because of the incident with Killy which _wasn’t_ my fault.”

“Okay, then, meet me at the library on Saturday at ten o’clock.” Will pauses, “does Max want me to teach him English?”

“No, he has an older cousin whose teaching him.”

And to be honest, Tom would prefer it was just him and Will. He can concentrate better.

* * *

**November**

He likes Will as his teacher. He’s not bossy or patronising like the teachers at school and he doesn’t treat Tom like an idiot. They agreed to meet every Saturday morning in the same spot at the library. Will always wears a knitted jumper, they are always vivid in colour and Will always looks perfectly content in them. It has Tom wondering where he is getting this infinite supply of jumpers because _Strut_ doesn’t have that many.

“Why do you know Latin?” Tom asks Will when they are huddled on the sofa, looking over French conjugation,“it’s a dead language, isn’t it? No one speaks it anymore.”

“Latin never truly died,” Will says, taking a sip of his tea. Today, Will wears another knitted jumper, this one is multi-coloured with bright patterns and shapes.

Mrs. Hubert made the tea for him. She offers him the sweetest smile every time he comes in and makes him tea despite his protests.And Tom? She glares at Tom, tells him she’s got her eye on him and that one wrong move will have him banned for life like his best friend. Tom will frown and tell her Killy is not his best friend but it’s fruitless. Mrs. Hubert, like the rest of this bloody village, have permanently tied Tom to Killy.

“Latin evolved into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian,” Will says, “those are known as the Romance languages. To learn Latin is to have an understanding of six languages at once. Plus, it can improve your own English since fifty percent of English words are from latin and…”

“And?” Tom prompts. 

Will throws him that faint smile Tom has grown accustomed to in the last couple of weeks. 

“And Eton gave us no choice but to learn it,” he says. 

Tom spins a pen between his fingers. “So…why’d you leave Eton? Isn’t it supposed to be the fanciest school in the country?”

“I—I had some issues at home. I had to leave.”

“What issues?” Tom says, feeling close to solving the quiet mystery around William Schofield. There is something about him that feels hidden, an ever shifting puzzle with a thousand possible combinations. 

Will glances away, growing tenser and more uncomfortable with each second. “Nothing worth talking about,” he says and points to the list of common verbs for Tom to memorise, “go on.”

Tom lets it go and starts reading out the verbs. It seems he not only inherited his mother’s eyes and her love for baking but also her nosiness.

**↭**

The more he speaks French to Max, the more Max speaks English. On the last day of November, Max is over at Tom’s for their usual homework session. They finished their arithmetic assignment and they have been in Tom’s room playing Go Fish for the last hour. Tom was worried he would have to spend a good thirty years explaining the game to Max in a mixture of basic French and broken English but it turns out Max knows the game well. Will said playing games is a good way for both of them to learn each other’s language. 

Will had them make a deal a few weeks ago when Tom and Max found him in the library knee-deep in foreign poetry. When they play their games, Max can only speak in English and Tom can only speak in French. 

To Tom’s ever growing annoyance, Max is winning at Go Fish and his grin only gets wider each time he gets a card off Tom. 

“Myrtle!” Tom calls and she comes bounding into the bedroom, her tail wagging like always. She stares at him with those big, brown eyes and Tom can’t help but give her a cuddle. “Sit,” he commands. “You’re my good luck charm.”

Myrtle does as she’s told and settles next to Tom, watching their game with interest.

“This is very easy,” Max says in his heavy Austrian accent. Honestly, it’s like music to Tom’s ears every time Max speaks English. 

“ _Tais-toi.”_ Tom glares at him. _Be quiet._

Max laughs and Tom grins. He should have learnt French sooner. 

They are on their third round of Go Fish with Max still in the lead when Joe barges into his bedroom. 

“What the — can you knock?” Tom frowns up at Joe. “ _c’est grossier.”_

“ _Qui? Ton frère?_ ” Max says. _Who?_ Something _brother?_

Tom gives Max a look and Max rolls his eyes like he always does when Tom reminds him to speak English. “Who are you…naming…” he winces, probably thinking it’s not the right word, “…rude?”

“Me, mate,” Joe says, “and we share this bedroom, Tom, I don’t need to knock to come into my own room.” He nods behind him, “Max, your cousin is here to take you home.”

Max springs up off the bed, “ah, perfect.” He looks at Tom, “I…I think I win the — _Scheiße,_ _ich habe das wort vergessen—”_

“The game?” Tom provides.

Max snaps his fingers, “yes! The game, I win, yes?”

It hurts him to admit but his grandfather is raising him to be a man of honour. “ _Oui_ ,” Tom concedes with a deep sigh.

Max cheers and heads out of the room. When he’s out of earshot, Joe closes the door and walks over to Tom’s bed.

“Why the bloody hell didn’t you tell me about Lauri?” Joe hisses, sitting down at the edge of the bed.

Tom stops shuffling the cards back together and looks at him. “What are you on about?”

“Lauri,” Joe says, “your little Australian—”

“ _Austrian_ ,” Tom bites out. He knows Joe says Australian just to annoy him at this point. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe waves a hand dismissively in the air, “Lauri, your little Austrian mate’s cousin, why didn’t you tell me about her?”

It turns out Max’s mother isn’t a housewife like Tom’s. She works as a translator for Cambridge University Press. They send her books upon books they want translating from or into Latin or German or whatever language they require and she does it. Lauri helps her with the translations. Whenever Tom goes to Max’s house he passes by Lauri in Mrs. Baumer’s study surrounded by piles of paper writing and rewriting. It seems the whole Baumer family are talented linguist while some, if not all the people in Rainford can barely speak English. He’s only spoken to her a handful a times as she is always busy in the study with her head buried in about a dozen books. Tom thinks Lauri and Will would get on like a house on fire.

“What is there to say?” Tom throws him a confused glance, “I’ve only met her a couple of times.” He shrugs, “she’s seems like a lovely girl.”

“How old is she?” Joe asks, “she doesn’t go to our school, I would have noticed her.”

Tom wraps a rubber band around the deck of cards as he says, “I don’t know? She’s not much older than you I don’t think.”

“What does she do?” He asks, “if she’s not in school…is she married?"

“She helps Max’s mum translate really old, really boring books for Cambridge University,” Tom says, a little confused by Joe’s sudden interest in Lauri, “And no, she’s not married. Why are you so— _oh_.” 

He recognises the bright, yearning spark in Joe’s green eyes now. He’s seen it before when Joe spent the last two summers pining over Sadie Fairchild, the vicar's eldest daughter. She was beautiful, she had many suitors in the village and other towns too but she had a soft spot for Joe. It’s no surprise, everyone in Rainford has a soft spot for him. 

He worked himself to the bone to impress her and show her he could provide a good life for her on their cherry farm, at one point he was sleeping two to three hours a night as he struggled to juggle the three jobs he had picked up. It had worked until a wealthier young man she had known since childhood had swept into town and asked for her hand. Joe didn’t know she had accepted his proposal until he found her with her bags packed at the train station. She had whispered _goodbye, I’m sorry_ and gone to live her new life in Scotland. 

Joe spent a good month in bed, mournful for a love lost and paralysed by the heartbreak. It took Tom, Mum and Granddad another month to coax him out of bed and another month again to bring him back to his old self. 

_The loss of love can hurt,_ Granddad had said when Tom asked if Joe was ill, _but there are different kinds of love and all can heal._

The yearning look in Joe’s eyes makes him nervous. He doesn’t want to watch Joe wither away as the heartbreak consumes him. Sadie showed Tom that Joe doesn’t just fall in love, he dives in head first with the biggest smile on his face. 

“Are you…” Tom starts, “are you interested in Lauri?” 

“What? No, no, _no_ ,” Joe tells him, leaning back on his hands. He scratches his cheek, “why? Do you think she’s interested in me?”

Tom sighs.

* * *

**December**

Tom turns fourteen on the fourth. It’s a Wednesday, meaning he has school but he won’t let that get him down. He wakes up to heavy snowfall outside and Mum skipping into his bedroom to pepper him with kisses all over his face.

“Happy birthday, pet!” Mum gushes as she squeezes his cheeks. “Fourteen! My god, you’re growing up fast!”

“Mum, quiet, please,” Joe groans from his bed on the other side of the bedroom, “some of us are forced to go to school.”

The force in that sentence is their mother, who is convinced a full and long education is the best chance the boys have going far in life. School is only compulsory until fourteen and you can leave to work. But then Mayor Leslie introduced ‘further education’ from fourteen to eighteen at Rainford Hill Secondary and everyone kid was forced to go by their parents.

“Mum,” Tom complains as he pushes her hands off his face, “I’m not a baby.”

Mum hums and stands up, “if you’re not a baby then you won’t want the cherry pie I made for your birthday will you?”

Tom throws his covers off and leaps out of bed. “Really?” He grins. 

Mum laughs, “my, my — someone is excited.”

“It’s my birthday!” He exclaims, running over to Joe’s bed and jumping on top of him. 

Joe grunts. “Why am I being punished, lord? What have I done?”

Tom rolls off Joe, runs out of the room and slides down the banister. Myrtle rushes out of the livingroom to greet him at the bottom of the stairs. Tom pets her head and she barks in excitement. 

Tom chuckles, “is that you wishing me happy birthday?” Myrtle barks again and Tom kneels down to hug her. He smiles, “thanks, M, you’re my favourite, y’know.”

Tom stands up and heads into the kitchen. He gasps when he sees a freshly-made cherry pie sitting on the windowsill. His mouth waters. The steam coming off the cherry pie tells Tom it was only taken out of the oven moments ago. Mum's the best baker in Rainford and anyone who says otherwise is adirty liar. Her famous cherry pies have won the top prize at the village’s annual spring fêtes for the last five years. She only makes it on special occasions like birthdays or holidays and sometimes after church if Joe and Tom have behaved well enough throughout the week. 

“Ah, the birthday boy makes his debut,” Granddad says, folding the large newspaper in his hands and setting it down on the round dinner table. 

Tom spreads his arms apart, “if you would like to shower me with praise you can.” He grins, “you have been blessed with another a year of my presence.”

“Or cursed,” Joe grumbles, trudging into the kitchen as he rubs his eyes. 

Mum smacks the back of Joe’s head. “No cheeky comments from you on your little brother’s birthday.”

Joe’s still dressed in his long johns like Tom. Mum follows behind him, smiling with her hands clasped together. She must have forced Joe out of bed so they could all have breakfast as a family on Tom’s birthday. She has already set the table with a jug of fresh orange juice and an assortment of fruit, scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms and beans in little dishes. 

Tom’s grin widens as he pulls a chair out and sits down next to Granddad. “Exactly,” he says, “you treat the birthday boy with the respect he deserves.”

Joe snorts and joins them on the round table. He rests his head in the palm of his hand and lets out a loud yawn. Mum puts on the oven gloves and picks up the steaming pie off the windowsill. Tom, Joe and Granddad’s wide eyes follow Mum as she places it in the middle of the table. She takes off the gloves and hangs them on the back of Joe’s chair. She sits down on the seat between Tom and Joe.

“Before you all inhale the pie in ten seconds,” Mum says with a raised finger, “let’s say grace.”

Everyone groans but they concede and take each other’s hands. 

↮

Tom offers to help Mum clear up when they finish eating but she shoos him out of the room and tells him to get dressed for school. He hugs her, giving her cheek a quick kiss as she washes the dishes before he heads upstairs. He just had a lovely breakfast with his family and three slices of cherry pie, his mood will be bright all day.

Joe throws his uniform at him when Tom returns to their bedroom. “Get dressed,” he says, shutting the door and lowering his voice. “But we’re not going to school.”

Tom picks up his uniform off the floor. “We’re not? Is it shut because of the snow?”

Tom doubts it. There could be an avalanche and Rainford Hill would still be open. 

“No, we’re going to Danecroft,” Joe says as he buttons up his white shirt.

Tom gasps. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s your birthday present,” Joe says and steps closer to Tom, “but, listen, you can’t say a word to Mum.”

Tom nods as he pulls on his trousers, “I know, I know.” He frowns, “wait, are we going now?”

“Yeah, by the time school ends it’ll be dark, it’s better to go now. We should be back by lunch time.”

“But the school will tell Mum if we’re not in.”

“I’ve already sorted that.”

“How?”

Joe starts putting on his tie. “They may or may not think we’re going off to our distant relative’s christening.”

Tom grins, “you are a bloody genius.”

Joe grins back, “I keep telling you to thank Sun Tzu.”

“Alright,” Tom says, pulling on his shirt, “thanks Sun Tzu!”

When they have finished getting dressed, they head downstairs. Mum hugs them both, holding onto Tom a little longer to wish him happy birthday and kiss his forehead.

It’s stopped snowing when Tom and Joe step outside but everything has been covered in white. Tom pulls on his gloves and stuffs his hands into his coat pockets as Joe pushes their small wooden gate open. Tom can’t stop smiling. He has wanted to go to Danecroft Castle since he was eight and Joe came back home and told him about how grand and menacing it was. 

“We might go to Idun's tree too,” Joe says as they walk up the hill with the snow crunching under their feet, “but we’ll play it by ear.”

Idun's tree or the Tree Stuck in Time is a great pink cherry blossom tree deep in the forest. It blooms all year round, always shedding and raining the forest with blossoms, never losing any blossoms. No matter the weather or the season it always bloomed. There’s an old legend in Rainford that on her out of the Underworld, Idun fell asleep against the tree once and it never stopped blooming. If you lay down under the tree Idun will bless you with health and peace. You will find a few of the villagers napping under Idun's Tree all spring and summer.

“Have I told you you’re my favourite brother?” Tom says, his cheeks hurting from how much he’s grinning now. 

Joe smirks, his breath comes out in white puffs, “I’m your only brother.”

“Even better!”

Joe laughs as they walk on.


	2. 1914 - Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will confronts a dreaded day. Tom and Max must deal with a shift in their friendship. Joe and Lauri grow closer. Far, far away, the grand stage for a fatal war is set in place.

* * *

☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ 

* * *

**1 9 1 4**

* * *

**February**

It is still snowing when Will wakes up. He is greeted with a headache and a deep cough wracking his body. Will reaches across for the jug of water Nan left for him. He pours himself a cup and with shaky hands he takes long, deep gulps. Will sighs and lies back down, pulling the duvet covers over his head. He has been ill for the last three days, shivering and sweating from a high fever. 

It was his seventeenth birthday yesterday, on the first day of February, and he spent it fighting off this cold. At least he was too ill to be awake for most of it. The fever has gone down somewhat and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to vomit from the dizziness every time he opens his eyes. Silver linings. 

Will’s grandmother has been a germaphobe as long as he can remember, even far back to his younger years when he would visit her with his father, she always insisted all dirt should be left outside. It came as no surprise to him that the moment he said he felt ill, Nan quarantined him in his bedroom with strict orders not to leave until his temperature was down. She comes into his room every three hours like clockwork to check on him or bring him his food. She turned away any and all visitors asking for Will, notifying them of his illness the second they try to knock on the door to inquire. 

Will is close to sleeping again when Nan knocks on the door. He coughs and glances up at the door, “come in.”

The door opens and Nan walks in holding a tray and wearing gloves and the mask she made herself the second she heard Will cough. Honestly, you would think Will was infected with the Black Death the way she’s carrying on. 

“Good afternoon, pumpkin,” Nan says, “how are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” he grumbles back.

She tuts as she trudges over to Will, “come on, up you get, time for lunch.”

His head aches at any slight movement but he pushes himself up and sits back against the bed’s wooden headboard. When he first moved in and saw his room featured an ornate king-sized bed Will wanted to swap it for the single one in the guest room downstairs because he didn’t think he would need such a large bed. It felt gratuitous. The years he spent at Eton in the small shared room, on the narrow, single bed taught him utilitarian ways. After spending the last three days — including his birthday — bed bound, he sees the advantages of having such a big bed. 

Nan sets the tray on Will’s lap and says, “now, eat up.” 

She has made him another large bowl of spinach and chicken soup with a fresh roll of bread and she expects him to finish every last bit of it. Apparently, nobody wastes food in Rainford. 

“Thanks, Nan,” Will says, picking up the big spoon in the bowl and starting to slurp up the warm, rich soup.

“You’re welcome, pumpkin,” Nan says, although it come out a little muffled through her mask. “Now, rest, I’ll be back up soon with some fruit.”

Will nods as she turns and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. He cranes his neck and looks out of the window at the falling snow burying the back garden in white. When he’s sure she has gone, he takes his worn-out copy of _Songs of Innocence and Experience_ and opens it to the page he had earmarked earlier. He has had it for years and he must have read it over a thousand times now butintricate poetry always reads fresh.

Somehow, Nan got into her head doing anything other than sleeping would make Will worse. It was his mother’s before her death. Will never met her as she died giving birth to him but Father always said it was her favourite book and the dearest thing she owned. He found it in Father’s study when he was eleven, about two months before Father shipped him off to Eton, and he spent all day reading it, soaking in the exquisite prose. The governess found Will huddled beneath the bookshelves in the evening, red-faced and annoyed that he had forgotten about his tutoring. 

_I — I was just reading,_ Will had told her as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the vacant halls of the Schofield mansion. 

_What book?_ Mrs. Keller had spat when they reached the library where all of Will’s tutoring took place. 

Will had nervously passed her the book and Mrs. Keller’s sour mood seemed to vanish.

She stared at the cover, _where did you get this?_

_Father’s study,_ Will had replied, wondering how much trouble he had gotten himself into this time. 

_This was your mother’s,_ Mrs. Keller said with that faraway look in her eyes, s _he adored poetry._ Mrs. Keller had turned to him then, _did you finish it all?_

Will shook his head, _no, but I did finish the Songs of Innocence and I was about to start the Songs of Experience._

Mrs. Keller watched him for a moment before she said, _the Songs of Experience are rather woeful but they were your mother’s favourite._

_Why?_ Will had asked, confused as to why his mother would prefer such bleakness. 

_I was going to have you recite your times tables but I think reading this —_ she held up the book _— would be more beneficial, wouldn’t you agree? Let’s work on the Songs of Experience today and perhaps you can tell me why your mother favoured them so much._

Will had nodded eagerly and quickly sat down to begin. Later, much later when Will had settled into life in Eton he had snuck the book back with him to his dormitory after a particularly lonely Christmas at home. Father had no use for it and nor did he seem to notice it had gone. The earthly remnants of his mother belonged with him.

Will sits in bed, comfy and satiated as he re-reads his mother’s favourite book and dips the bread into the soup his grandmother made. He doesn't have much of an appetite but he forces himself to eat. When the bowl is empty and the bread is finished and he has reached Songs of Innocence’s penultimate poem, Will places the tray on the bedside table and snuggles back under the duvet covers. Sleep takes him in moments. 

☾

Will’s fever finally disappears on Tuesday evening, a full week since he got it. Nan thinks it’s because he’s always “walking around all hours of the night and day with those Blake boys and without a proper coat!”. The village’s physician Nan harassed to coming around and checking Will was not dying said it’s because it’s winter and these kinds of illnesses are common with this season. 

Nan comes into his room, wearing the gloves and the mask once again to check his temperature with one of her many thermometers that evening. She nods when she sees its dropped down to normal. She declares him healthy and tells him he can leave his bedroom and join her for supper downstairs.

“I made a roast,” she says, packing away the thermometer, “I know it’s not Sunday but I reckon it’s the boost you need to ensure you stay healthy, pumpkin.”

Will has never felt more relieved to leave his bedroom after a week of dreary confinement. It has even stopped snowing outside. He’s surprised by how eager he is to go to school tomorrow, to see Joe and hide a smile as he argues with Tom over the smallest things. 

The roast chicken and vegetables Nan made is filling and Will surprises himself again by how hungry he is when he sees it laid out on the dining room table. His appetite has finally returned. Nan chats about the various things people get up to in the village as they eat. 

“The spring fêtes is in a few months and I hope Mrs. Blake adheres to the new guidelines on the size of the pies for the bakery competition because it will not be accepted if she doesn’t,” Nan says, pointing her fork at Will, “I’ve never met someone with such arrogance in my life. Flora Kissinger told me that she told George Hemmings that…”

“Uh-huh,” Will says, nodding along but not really listening. He zoned out twenty minutes ago. He always lets her gossip wash over him. He has no use of it. 

“…translate them for her,” Nan says when Will tunes in a few minutes later.The _translate_ filtered through to him.

He swallows the slice of carrot down and says, “pardon?”

“Mrs. Bäumer, the German—”

“Austrian,” Will says. 

It is perplexing that no one (except Tom and the Bäumers’ themselves) in the village seems to understand or care that Germany and Austria-Hungary are two different places. Every time he has heard people refer to the Bäumers’ it’s usually followed up by ‘those Germans’ and Tom’s annoyed correction that ‘those Germans are actually Austrian, you numpty.’ He’s pretty sure Joe thinks the Bäumers’ are Australian.

“Yes, yes, Austrian,” Nan says, scooping more veg onto her plate, “well, Mrs. Bäumer’s niece, I believe her name is Leila or Lala or—”

“Lauri,” Will provides. 

He hasn’t spoken to Lauri but he has seen her a few times when he drops Max off at his house on his walk home from school with Joe and Tom.

Nan frowns, “it’s rude to interrupt, pumpkin.”

Will goes back to cutting the chicken breast as he grumbles, “sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Nan tells him with a nod, “as I was saying, Lauri, Mrs. Bäumer’s niece came round yesterday looking for you.”

He looks up at that, “why?”

Perhaps she heard Will was teaching French to Tom and she wants him to teach English to Max but he’s sure Tom mentioned that she was doing that already. 

“Well, Lauri and her aunt are translators, they translate many works for Cambridge but she said they’re having a little trouble with a few books they were sent,” she explains, “and she wanted to ask for your help since she knows you’re fluent in Latin and French.”

“How does she know that?” Will asks, although he suspects Tom or Max told her. 

“I don’t know dear but does it matter? She said they would pay you too. It’s a great opportunity.” Nan says, “it’s exactly what you need after spending all week in bed. I told her I’d tell you as soon as you were better. Would you like to do it?”

Will has been in Rainford for over four months now and he’s still not used to being asked about his own wants and needs. Such things were decided for pupils at Eton and his father never cared to ask. It’s all Nan has asked since he moved to the village. _Do you want to go to Rainford Hill Secondary? What would you like for supper? Pumpkin, I’m going to knit you another jumper which colour would you like it in? Are you feeling better?_ She was already precious to him before as the only member of the Schofield family who was not cold or dead but he grown to cherish her more for it.

“I…I don’t know, I’m not a professional translator,” Will answers, feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves at the prospect of translating for Cambridge University. “Are you sure she was looking for me? Perhaps she was mistaken.”

Nan gives him a flat look. “She specifically asked for you, pumpkin,” she says, “apart from the Bäumers, you are the only person in the village who speaks more than one language. She was not mistaken.”

Will purses his lips and glances down at his plate, mulling over the idea. 

“I would have told her to go away because you were ill but the poor lass looked quite distressed,” Nan continues as Will pushes the roasted vegetables around his plate, “and yesterday, she came by again dropped off the books she wanted help in translating in case you agreed.”

Will looks up again, his interest piqued more than ever. “She dropped the books off? What books?”

Nan gestures to his plate of half-finished food, “when you’ve finished that I’ll show you.”

Will finishes his supper in minutes and waits for Nan to finish hers before he asks her to show him. She tuts, probably amused by his sudden eagerness and heads into the living room with Will following behind. 

A pile of three books bounded tightly by ribbon sit on the low coffee table. Nan points to them and sits down on the long sofa with a sigh as Will picks them up and sits down on the armchair opposite. He undoes the ribbon and flips through all three, trying to get a sense of the language and the story. Two of them are written by Ovid, _The Metamorphoses_ which he read numerous times in Eton for class and for leisure, and _Amores_ which he never read as Eton’s only surviving copy of the book was kept in a glass cage in College Library. _Les_ _Fleurs du Mal_ is the third book, _The Flowers of Evil._ Why does Lauri need help with translating it? Isn’t she a native French speaker? He smiles. Will has never had the chance to read it as Eton banned it the second it had been published because it was an ‘insult to public decency’. No one at Eton knew what this supposed indecency was and Will looks forward to finding out what it is. 

☾

Will’s suspicion that Tom informed Lauri of his trilingual skills are confirmed two days later. It’s a cold and frigid Thursday as Will makes the journey home with Joe, Tom and Max. Joe and Max walk a few feet ahead of them. Max’s English has improved rapidly in the last two months, he has a basic understanding of it now. He told Joe to speak slower when he is conversing with Max as the more people Max talks to the quicker his English will evolve. Max’s face is scrunched up in concentration as Joe speaks to him about winning the latest rugby match, whether or not he is following the conversation is unclear but what matters is that he is trying. 

Tom walks beside him, waving his hands in the air as he tells Will about the latest trick he taught Myrtle. 

Will glances down at him. He says, “thank you.”

Tom blinks and glances up at him. He says, “for what?”

Tom is a lot sharper than most people think. He has picked up French with such lightning speed and determination, Will wouldn’t be surprised if he was fluent by the end of the year. He simply needs to keep practicing. His motivation is based on Max’s own goal to learn English which makes it a juggling act to ensure Tom and Max stay on track.

He’s overheard some of the teachers talk about him, particularly Mr. Clayson who teaches the younger children arithmetics. The amusement in his voice as he jokes with the other teachers about Tom’s mathematical abilities is — it is aggravating to say the least. He hopes Tom hasn’t heard any of it, judging by Tom’s consistently sunny disposition he hasn’t heard it or he doesn’t care. 

“For telling Lauri I’m a translator,” Will says, wanting to add _even though I’m not_ but decides against it, “she dropped off some books she needed help translating and I’ve been working on them to show her today.”

It was what he needed after spending a week in bed battling a horrible fever. He devoured all the books Lauri left within a day and he’s spent every day since then working on the Latin to English translations for Ovid as she requested. He has not started on _Flowers of Evil_ as she didn’t make it clear in her notes which language she wanted it translated to. It’s most likely English but he didn’t want to waste time doing that only to find out she wanted it in Latin. 

“Oh, right, you’re welcome,” Tom says, glancing away and then turning to face Will with one of those bright grins that turns him into the spitting image of Joe. His grin falters, “I felt bad that you spent your birthday ill and Mrs. Scho—your nan wouldn’t let us see you so I thought, wait, what would normal people find depressing but Will would love? Reading and translating really old, really boring books!”

The corner of Will’s lips quirk up. Joe’s right. He is a cheeky little sod but Will would not have him any other way. He is thankful to have him in his life. 

“Well, I’m glad I came to mind then,” Will says, placing his hand on his chest in fake sincerity.

Tom’s bright grin returns, “you’re such a bookworm I reckon you had the time of your life reading ‘em. What books did she even give you? Poetry?”

Max’s laughter echoes in the quiet street. Will looks up to find Joe’s making a silly face at the younger boy. 

He nods as he glances back at Tom, “Ovid and Baudelaire.”

Tom squints, “are those people or are those the book titles? I can never tell.”

“People,” Will replies with a soft smile, “in fact, they considered to be some of the greatest writers in history.”

It is part of the reason Will was so reluctant to work on their translations. How could he, a boy of barely seventeen, hope to ever interpret the work of the greats for the masses. It was one thing to do it in his spare time where the only set of eyes were his but it is quite another to do it professionally.

They turn onto the narrow, dirt path behind a row of terraced houses. It’s a short cut that takes them straight to a small stone bridge coated with moss and vines where the river runs underneath. Otherwise it’s a longer walk through the Square and the local park to get to their respective homes. 

Tom whistles, “who’s your favourite then?”

Will opens to mouth, then snaps it shut and frowns as he realises no one has ever asked him that question, nor has he ever considered it himself. How odd. He quickly runs through the names and works of the hundreds of poets and writers’ in his mind but he may adore too many to single out a specific one. 

Luckily, Will is saved from answering as Max and Joe reach the end of the dirt path and turn to face them. The stone bridge is just behind. 

“Chop, chop, you two,” Joe says, “some of us have jobs to get to. Mr. Gordon is looking for any reason to sack me after I accidentally lost half the papers last week.”

“How did that happen?” Will asks when him and Tom have reached them.

“Long story short,” Joe answers as the four boys cross the bridge, “the bloody wind took them and the snow ruined the ones I couldn’t pick up in time.”

Tom laughs, “you should have seen him, Will, he was running around trying to get them all back. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Yeah, and this pillock,” Joe points to his younger brother, “offered no help.”

Tom shakes his head, “and ruin the entertaining show you gave me?”

Joe pushes Tom who stumbles and almost slips on the icy ground but Will catches him with an arm around his shoulders. He pulls Tom against him to ensure he doesn't fall over, when he glances down at Tom to check he’s fine it is to find Tom staring up at him with flushed, red cheeks and wide blue eyes.

Will says, “I’ve got you.”

The flush on Tom’s cheeks spreads to the rest of his face as his mouth hangs open and he continues to stare at Will like he’s never seen him before. 

Will frowns, wondering if the cold has gotten to him. “Tom?”

Tom blinks about a hundred times in one second before he sputters and pushes away from Will. In his hurry, he almost slips again but he reaches out and grabs bridge’s wooden railing. 

“I—I’m fine,” he says with a flushed face. “Thanks.”

Will watches him with confusion. He didn't think Tom was so easily embarrassed when only last month Killy pulled his pants down in the middle of courtyard and he didn't even blink. He simply pulled his back up and distracted everyone with some dancing. 

Tom crouches down to collect some snow he quickly forms into a lumpy ball and he chucks it at Joe. Tom groans in annoyance when Joe ducks down in time and the snowball flies into the river below instead. 

“One day, little brother!” Joe shouts as Tom stomps away and Max laughs with his arms wrapped around his stomach. 

☾

Max’s house is the last stop on their morning walks to school and it is the first stop on their way back home. The stone cottage is nestled at the end of Wick Lane surrounded by high hedges. 

“What are you doing?” Joe asks when Will starts following Max to his house. 

“Lauri gave me some books to translate,” he says as Max knocks on the door, “I’m giving them back to her.”

Joe perks up then and jogs over to them as Tom hangs back with his hands in his trouser pockets. 

“She did?” Joe says, “since when do you speak to her?”

“Since Tom told her I can help with translations,” Will says. 

Joe glances back at his brother who smiles back at him like he knows a secret. Joe turns to face Will, he says, “does she—”

The door opens to reveal Lauri standing on the other side. She pauses as her hazel-brown eyes, a shade lighter than Max’s, take in Will, Max and Joe on her doorstep and Tom standing in the street behind them. She is probably surprised because Will, Joe and Tom normally don’t hang around when dropping Max home. Her eyes land on Joe and she seems to straighten up ever so slightly you wouldn’t notice unless you were paying close attention.

Her smile is shy when she says, “um, hello.”

“Hello,” Joe repeats, his green eyes never leaving hers. His own smile spreads slowly across his face.

Lauri and Joe watch each other for a moment too long before Max pushes Lauri aside and rushes into his house, shouting that he needs the loo in French. 

Lauri huffs and glances back at her younger cousin as he disappears behind a corner, “ _ne courez pas autour de la maison, Max!_ ” _Don’t run in the house, Max!_

She chuckles as she turns back to the boys. Will shrugs off his leather book bag and takes out Lauri’s books, he bound them back in the same spindly rope but this time with two notebooks worth of translation drafts and notes attached.

“The, uh, stuff you wanted,” he says, clearing his throat, “I only did the sections you highlighted. I wasn’t quite sure which language you wanted with _The Flowers of Evil_ but I did add annotations in Latin and English in case you wanted both or….” he chews the inside of his cheek, a habit Nan often admonishes him for, “…or either, I don’t know.”

Lauri looks at the books with awe and turns the same look on Will. 

“This…this is marvellous,” Lauri says in that lilting French accent of hers. 

Nan says she has a gentle voice like Will and that she could listen to ‘that lovely Frenchy talk all day long!’ Who knows, Nan might swap Will for Lauri to read her poetry on the evenings they spend sat around the fireplace.

“ _C’est pas vrai_ ,” Lauri continues, pulling out one of Will’s notebooks and flicking through it. _Unbelievable._ “And you did it so quickly!”

Will shrugs, “it’s nothing. I’m not a professional by any means but I gave it a go. I suppose that’s all one can do.”

“ _Merci beaucoup_ ,” Lauri smiles at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners. The passing wind sends a loose strand of blonde hair falling over her heart-shaped face. She blows it aside and says “I am working on…”

“Wait, uh, what,” Joe starts, stepping forward, “do you…do you need any help with that?”

Lauri opens her mouth to answer but Tom is already crossing the street and grabbing Joe by his arm. “You only speak English,” he says, dragging him away, “they don’t need your help, now, c’mon, I wanna go home and you have a paper round to get to.”

“Oh, I gotta go but…see you soon, Lauri!” Joe shouts as Tom pulls him further down the street. 

“ _À plus tard!_ ” Lauri smiles and waves at him. _See you later!_ She turns back to Will, “please, come in."

“Thank you,” Will says as Lauri steps aside to let him in. “I — I meant to ask, why do you need help translating Baudelaire? Your English is excellent.”

“Ah, because Cambridge would like it to be translated into Latin for archival purposes and while I am fluent in Latin, it is my weakest language,” she explains, shutting the door behind him, “and Tom said you are very talented in both French and Latin.”

* * *

**March**

“I don’t know,” Will says, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Will, _please,_ ” Joe stares at him with raised eyebrows. “Do you want me to beg? I’m not above begging.”

Tom grins as his eyes skip between Will and Joe. “ _Please_ make him beg.”

Will knows it is serious if Joe has left his adoring group of friends in the courtyard to seek him out in the tiny, school library. 

When Will finally recovered from his fever and he returned to Rainford Hill, Tom had immediately checked he was well and a few days later asked Will if they could increase their French lessons to twice a week. Will has an inkling that Tom feels competitive about how quickly Max is picking up English. For the last month, they have been meeting in the school library on weekdays and the main library in the Square. He thought Tom would get bored of spending so much time with Will but he only seems excited by the prospect which only serves to confuse Will more. He doesn't question it. After all, you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Joe barged into the library a few minutes ago where he found Will in the middle of reiterating the rules of French pronunciation to Tom, especially the vowels because that is one of his weakest areas. 

Joe sits in the opposite chair with a pleading look on his face as he tries to convince Will of his ‘foolproof’ plan to woo Lauri. Every time they drop Max off at his house, Joe lingers around to try and catch a sight of Lauri, Will and Tom have to wait in the street while he makes casual conversation with her. Lauri seems to enjoy it with the way she giggles and smiles whenever she speaks to him. 

Tom looks at Will, his blue eyes bright with glee. He says, “if I say it in French will you make him beg?”

Joe flicks Tom’s forehead, “shut up.”

Tom sticks his tongue out at him in response and Joe turns back to Will with that pleading look. Will sighs. He understands now why Joe has half the school wrapped around his little finger. 

Joe says, “it’s better if you ask her because it will look more casual but when we’re in the pub I'll make my move.”

“At the pub? How romantic,” Tom smirks. A pause, then, “can I come?”

“No,” Joe says. 

Tom stares. “Why? And don’t say it’s because it’s—”

“Strictly sixteen and over,” Joe interrupts with a smug smile, “exactly. Y’know the drill, little brother.”

Tom glares at him. 

Joe turns to Will, “ _please?_ ”

“Fine,” Will grumbles, “I’m going to her house after school on Friday to go over some Ovid notes and I’ll ask her then.” 

Joe’s ‘foolproof’ plan to woo Lauri involves inviting her along to the local pub and having a ‘friendly drink-up’ to celebrate the start of Spring with a dozen or so of Joe’s other friends.

“Yes!” Joe shouts, standing up so quickly he knocks his chair back. 

Miss Belt, the school librarian, harshly shushes them from her desk near the entrance doors. Joe winces, apologises and picks up the chair.

“Schofield,” Joe says, placing his elbows on the table and leaning forward, “you are an absolute life saver, mate. I owe you one.”

“It’s fine,” Will tells him because it is. 

“Tell her to get there for like three,” Joe says, “and then we’re going to Idun’s tree after — or Danecroft, I haven’t decided yet.”

Tom frowns, “I wanna go Danecroft too.”

Joe says, “look, we’ll go together next weekend, alright?”

Tom smiles and nods, seeming satisfied. 

Joe turns to Will, “thanks, mate!”

He pats Will's shoulder hard before turning to ruffle Tom’s mop of curly hair and running out of the library when Tom tries to hit him. 

Tom turns back to Will, “you should have said no.”

“Why? I don’t mind.”

If organising a weekend gathering as an excuse to spend time with Lauri is what makes Joe happy then so be it. Joe was the first person to welcome him and show him around Rainford when he moved here six months ago. 

“Joe gets a little…” Tom pauses, “carried away when he fancies someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just—” Tom licks his lips and twirls around the pen between his fingers, “I just worry about him is all. Y’know how some people wear their hearts on their sleeves?”

Will nods.

“My brother gives it away without a second thought.”

☾

Will doesn't know how to organically bring up the pub when he reunites with Lauri that Friday. He flounders for most of the afternoon, wracking his brain for an opening as him and Lauri are working on Ovid’s _Amores._ They are sitting in the living room of the Baumers’ home, surrounded by piles of books and neverending notes. Max has gone down to London with his parents as their preferred tailor is there.

“ _Ici,_ ” Will says, pointing to the second stanza of Book IX. _Here._ “You have to remember Ovid likes using chiasmus with regards to certain names and constructions.”

Lauri nods along, “you’re right and in order to emulate perfectly this stanza in English the word order must just be as unusual and artful as it is in Latin. It will replicate the intrigue in his poetry since Ovid seems to relish in defying the conventions of typical elegiac word place—”

“Pub,” Will blurts out because he is an awkward idiot and he couldn't find a proper opening for it.

Lauri glances at him, “what?”

“I meant,” Will closes his eyes and opens them, “apparently it is tradition for people to go the local pub for a drink and dance at the start of spring. The children have arts and crafts in Jade Park to keep them busy. Me and Joe are going to _The Round Table_ with a few others tomorrow, would —would you like to come?” He asks, pauses and adds, “it is…it’s going to be fun.” 

Joe would be smacking his forehead if he heard Will’s attempt to persuade Lauri to come and, honestly, they are more Joe’s friends than Will’s.

“Oh, really?” Lauri says, straightening up a little like she does when Joe is near. “Where?"

“ _The Round Table_ ,” he says, “it's the pub next to the statue of Henry VIII and then we might begoing to Danecroft or Idun’s tree after, the big cherry tree in the forest the village is quite taken by.”

“ _Ah_ , I think Max mentioned it a few times. He said it is a….magic tree?”

“Kind of,” Will says. 

He has gone to the tree with Joe, Tom and Max a few times. It’s beautiful and ancient and he still doesn’t understand how it can bloom all year. The first time he heard about it, about the cherry tree that never dies he had dismissed it as a local myth like how a gremlin lives in the old well in near the school but he feels transfixed by the tree and the Greek legend attached to it. He had spent a weekend in the library finding as many books on it as possible with Mrs. Hubert’s help. She had more than happy to fill him in the tree’s long history.

“Legend says the tree is Idun’s private entrance to the Underworld,” he says, “on the last day of Spring, after long journey, Idun slept under the tree and her vibrant youth blessed it with eternal life. The Anglo-Saxons that lived in this area worshipped her greatly. I think the carvings in the seven stones around the three were meant to mark each sacrifice made to her.”

Lauri grimaces, “human sacrifice?”

Will shakes his head, “no, I — I think they were sacrificing sheep. A lot of sheep bones were found a few hundred yards from the tree. Death for life. Blood for beauty.”

“I guess that explains why there are so many sheep in Rainford,” Lauri says in a breath of laughter. 

Will chuckles, “exactly.” He clears his throat, “uh, will you come tomorrow…then?”

“I do not wish to intrude on you and Joe’s time with your friends,” Lauri says. “I don’t really know them…”

“I don’t really know them either. We can sit in the corner and not really know them together.”

Lauri giggles, then says, “ _oui,_ I will come. What time?”

“Three,” he says, “but Joe and I will come to pick you up tomorrow and we’ll go together.”

Lauri smiles, “ _parfé_.” _Perfect._

☾

_The Round Table_ is loud and crowded. Will and Lauri manage to grab seats in the beer garden behind the pub with Joe and his other friends. About ten of them are sat around the large picnic table crowded with half-empty beer mugs and cigarettes. It is a clear, warm day in late March, perfect conditions for the village to celebrate the start of spring. Joe has captivated the table’s attention as he regales the tale of how the rugby team won the last half of the game with seconds to spare. Will and Lauri sit on the opposite side near the edge, the both of them engaged in their own private discussion on Ovid’s poetic style.

Joe got Will two pints of beer the second they stepped into the pub and demanded he drink up. Will has only drank one in the last two hours but he feels the alcohol buzzing through his veins and loosening his limbs. 

“ _Non, non_ , think about it, Will,” Lauri says as she waves her lit cigarette in the air, “Ovid plays on words much more than other poets we have seen, giving them a sexual connotation more graphic than any other elegist.”

“Which words?” He asks, smiling as he sips his beer.

Lauri scoffs, “words like _opus_ in three point fifteen, _inferior_ in one point one, and _desultor_ in one point three. Words that we typically think of as post-positive Ovid uses in grand poetic style, placing them in an unexpected order in his lines.”

This is incredibly refreshing. He hasn't had a conversation like this in months — not since leaving Eton.

Will frowns, “he tends to be more explicit in his writings than the other elegists, don’t you think?”

Lauri looks lovely under the mid-noon sun, she has styled her golden hair in bunched curls decorated with pearly beads rather high on her head. She looks like a Gibson Girl, wearing lace gloves and dressed in a high-neck, cream tea gown. She turned many heads upon walking in with him and Joe, none more than Joe himself. He stared at her like she had transformed into an archangel. He shoots her that exact look every few minutes as he jokes with his friends. He has only said a few words to her since they stepped into the pub. It is perplexing behaviour. 

“Because, unlike you, Will, he is not afraid to get graphic,” she says, taking a drag of her cigarette and exhaling it out, “it makes for a unique kind of poetry that has better flow and individuality than either Tibullus or Propertius and if we cannot replicate this is in our translations it is pointless.”

“What makes you think I’m afraid to get graphic?” Will asks, a little affronted by the observation but also curious at how quickly she figured it out.

Lauri laughs, “your face was red the whole time we went over your notes for _Les Fleurs du Mal._ ” She pats his arm, “it was the most adorable thing I have ever seen.”

Will opens his mouth to defend himself when Joe appears out of nowhere and rests a hand on his shoulder. 

“Will,” Joe says. 

Will looks up at him. “Yes?”

Joe’s eyes linger on Lauri for a moment before landing on Will. He nods to the thatched-roof pub in front of them, “do you fancy another beer, mate?”

“No, I’m fine I still—”

“Need more? Yeah, me, too,” Joe says, grabbing Will by the arm and dragging him out of his seat. He glances back at Lauri, “be back in a mo!”

“Joe, what—”

“We need to swap seats,” Joe says as he pulls Will into a cramped corner by the tall hedges, “I wanna chat to Lauri, you can take my seat and chat to Kara.”

“Who?” Will says. He cannot place a face to that name. 

“Kara Kilgour?” Joe says, frowning when Will shows no recognition. He points behind him to their table where Lauri sits and smokes her cigarette in peace as Joe’s other friends laugh and joke around. He points to a petite girl with red hair pulled up in a loose roll, she sits by Joe’s empty seat. “She’s one of Killy’s older sisters?”

“Oh, yes,” Will says, recognising her now. “She sits next to me in Politics.”

Although she never seems to be paying attention in class, always making imaginary doodles on her desk with her fingers or staring forlornly out of the window. She seems so mellow and softhearted in comparison to Killy, who was almost expelled for defacing the boys’ bathroom last week. 

Joe slings an arm over Will’s shoulder and says, “she’s quite pretty isn’t she? She certainly thinks you’re handsome.”

“She does?”

“Yeah, you should chat to her and I’ll chat to Lauri. It’s a win, win.”

It's not a win, win. Will doesn't know how to talk to people in general let alone girls. Lauri doesn't count, any one who understands poetry like her is easy to talk to.

“You have not said more than two words to Lauri since we came in,” Will says, confused by Joe’s antics at this point, “why do you want to talk to her now?”

“Because I don’t want to look desperate mate,” Joe says, “there’s a game to be played here.”

“Why must there be a game?”

“Don’t you get it yet, Will?” Joe leans in to whisper like he is revealing the last sublime secret of the world. “It’s all one great, big game.”

Will’s eyes narrow. The Blake brothers, he realises, have a special skill in confusing Will. Unable to decipher Joe’s meaning with the alcohol slowing down his thoughts, Will just nods and tells Joe he can take his seat and talk to Lauri. 

When they get back to the table, Will sits with Kara and Joe sits with Lauri. They seem to light up in each other’s presence. 

“Hello, Will,” Kara says with a shy smile when he sits down with his pint of beer. “I like your jumper.”

Will glances down at the latest, brightly coloured jumper Nan knitted for him. This one is a lighter and more suited to the warmer weather. 

He looks back at her. “Oh, um, thank you.”

Joe’s right. She is quite pretty. Will tries to return her smile but it feels clunky and forced. Growing up in an all-boys school and spending the majority of his time with his nose buried in a book has left him clueless about girls. Joe’s ease with them truly baffles him. He drinks more of his beer and hopes for liquid courage.

* * *

**May**

The approaching end of spring and the start of summer brings two things; cherry blossoms and Max’s birthday. The Blakes own and run their own cherry farm. A little past their small back garden is a cobblestone path that leads to acres and acres of cherry blossom trees. Will has caught glimpses of it every now and then when he visited the Blake brothers but he never stays long enough to take up Tom’s offer of a tour. 

He goes over to the Blake’s house that day to work on the History essay with Joe due in a few days. Although Joe saw no point in it because school finishes next month because according to him they “won’t have any bloody need for Henry VIII and his neverending stream of wives in the summer holidays.” Mr. Geel overhead him and threatened to fail Joe and make him spend his summer in school. Joe’s attitude changed quickly and Will has been helping him craft his essay. He has the time since he wrote and finished his paper the day it was assigned. 

Joe and Tom’s mother, who dislikes being called Mrs. Blake because it makes her feel like an old woman, opens the door when he reaches their small cottage covered in climbing vines. Myrtle has come to the door too, probably curious as to who it is.

“Will,” she beams.

“Hello, Elsie,” he says, “is Joe in?”

She has drilled into Will’s head enough times to call her Elsie and it’s finally stuck. 

Elsie steps aside, shifting the large wash basket she holds up against her hip, “yeah, he’s in his room with Tom and Max.”

“Thank you,” he says, strolling past her and pausing by the coat hanger to pat Myrtle’s head. 

“Oh, and Will?” 

Will turns to her, “yes?”

“Tell Joe and Tom I want them in the orchard at noon sharp,” Elsie says, then she tilts her head to the side, “actually, we could use an extra pair of hands. Can you stay a little later to help as well?”

“I don’t mind helping,” he says, “what do you want me to do?”

“When the cherry trees bloom they cover the whole orchard in blossoms,” she tells him, “me and the boys, sometimes their granddad if he feels up to it, clear away the blossoms to get ready for harvesting. We’re normally done in time for supper, which you can stay and join us for. There’s a cherry pie in it for you.”

Joe has mentioned they do this every May, a long standing tradition in their family. It sounds quite fun. 

Will smiles, “you don’t need to bribe me, Elsie, I’ll help.” 

“You’re a better person than my boys then because bribery or threats is the only thing that works with them two.” She says, walking into the kitchen. She pauses in the doorway and turns to him, “and will you tell Max, I’d like him to help too? Do mention the cherry pie on offer as that will entice him.”

Will nods and walks up the stairs. Joe and Tom’s shared bedroom is the first door on the right on the landing. He opens the door to find Max standing on the other side with a slingshot aimed at his face. Tom stands next to him with his hand out. The two boys have wrapped school ties around their heads as bandanas. 

“Halt!” Tom demands, “you shall not pass without wishing our good fellow Max here a happy birthday. He’s thirteen, which is a man in Jewish culture and as a man he deserves your respect.”

“Exactly,” Max throws Tom a smile. “I mean, I am not Jewish but the sentiment applies, no?”

“Where did you get that?” He asks, gesturing to Max’s slingshot.

“He made it for me,” Max nods his head at Tom, “it’s my —  _ich habe das wort vergessen — ah,_ birthday present! I had one like this at home but I lost it when we left Vienna. This one is even better than the one I had. ”

If he wasn't being threatened Will would be impressed with Max’s English. He has made leaps and bounds with his command of the language since he had stared up at Will in shock almost a year ago when he heard Will could speak French.

Behind them, Joe lies on his bed with his arms folded under his head and a toothpick his mouth. He takes it out and says, “just say it Will, they’re bloody lunatics. Max almost took my eye out with that thing for not saying it quick enough.”

“Um, sure,” Will looks at Max who still has the slingshot aimed at him, “Happy — happy birthday, Max.”

Max grins and lowers the slingshot. Tom puts his hand down, “you may enter.”

“Finally,” Joe says as Will walks over to him, “let’s get this bloody essay done.”

Will sits down on Joe’s bed, “your mum wants us in the orchard at noon.”

“Us?”

“She recruited me and Max to help.”

“Brilliant,” Joe sits up against the headboard. ‘We’ll be done quicker and I’ll be eating cherry pie in no time.”

☾

Will helps Joe finish his essay in time and they head into the back garden where Max and Joe are playing football. Joe and Tom’s grandfather sits in a rocking chair on the patio, watching them with a lit cigar in his mouth. Elsie comes out of the house in trousers and a loose shirt to Will’s surprise. He has never seen a woman dressed like that unless they were due to go horseback riding. He supposes very few, if any people in a working class village like Rainford own horses. 

She must see the surprise on his face because she laughs as she walks past him. “You think I can clean the orchard properly in a dress?”

He blinks, “no, I…suppose not.”

Elsie gives him an amused smile before she claps her hands to get Tom and Max’s attention. “Boys!” She shouts. They stop kicking the ball and turn to her, “let’s go!”

The four boys follow Elsie to the narrow wooden gate at the back and onto the cobblestone path lined with colourful bushes of lavender and hydrangeas until they reach a rolling orchard packed with beautiful, blossoming cherry trees. The air is sweet and warm and for an alarming second, Will thinks its snowing but it’s the white cherry blossoms raining around them, coating the whole orchard in white. He looks around in awe, wondering if this is the Garden of Eden. 

“Right, grab a basket,” Elsie says and points to the pile of baskets against one of the trees a few metres away, “and put all the cherry blossoms in them.”

“ _Warum_?” Max speaks up. He looks as awed by the orchard as Will. “If you leave them they will simply rot away won’t they?”

“We use them to make potpourri,” Elsie replies, grabbing herself a basket, “and we package and sell them to many shops in London. Potpourri is all the rage there. They can’t get enough of it, I’m telling you! Now, c’mon. The sooner we begin, the sooner I can get you boys some lunch.”

Max turns to Tom with a bright grin, white petals fall into his honey blond hair. He says, “first one to fill the most baskets has to give the loser a piggyback whenever they want.”

Tom returns his bright grin. “Deal!”

They each grab a basket and quickly start shovelling the blossoms into the basket. Will and Joe grab their own and follow suit. It takes the whole day to clear the orchard but time flies with Tom and Max running around trying to beat each other in their self-made competition and Joe telling him about his future plans to woo Lauri. 

“She’s the one,” Joe says as they sit against one of the trees for a break. 

The sun slides further and further down the horizon. Tom and Max are locked in a game of thumb wars a few trees away. Elsie brought them all freshly squeezed orange juice and bowls of sliced apples on a tray. 

Will munches on his slices and says, “the one for what?”

“Marriage,” Joe tells him, euphoria radiating out of him, “she’s the one I want to marry.”

Will smiles as warmth blooms in his chest. He is happy Joe has found love but more than anything he is happy to be here with his friends in this quaint village that seems to exist outside of the world. It is a strange feeling. He could get used to it.

* * *

**June**

The day he has been dreading for the last year has finally arrived. It arrives on a cloudy, gloomy day on the ninth of June and imbues a sombre mood into the Schofield household. Nan has him dress smartly in a clean, dark suit and striped bowtie and she hovers in the bathroom doorway to make sure Will styles his caramel brown hair is into a neat side part. It is an important day. He has to look presentable. Nan wears her best dress and her biggest, feathery hat. When they are both done and dressed, Nan pinches his cheek, tells him he looks handsome and they head out.

It’s a Tuesday but St. Christopher’s church offers daily half-hour masses on weekdays and the traditional full hour masses on Sundays. It’s a short walk to the church, around five minutes as they live close to the Square.

“Oh, good afternoon Father,” Nan says as they walk up the steps to the stone church. 

Father Fairchild, a short and fat man in his sixties with white hair and a childhood obsession with trains, greets them in the doorway. “Mabel, Will!” He beams, “it’s a bit of a dreary day but yes, it is a good afternoon. Welcome!” 

Will should be at school today but Nan called them to say he had a special appointment, although she failed to mention the supposed appointment was with God. 

_It’s your father’s day,_ Nan had said when Will asked why he was missing school, _we should be with God to remember him._

Will didn't kick up a fuss about it. Father was her only child and if this is what she needs to cope then he will be there for her. Nan attends mass every day, it’s been part of her routine since Grandpa died almost ten years ago. Will would go with her every day because he knows she likes the company but he has school. Although, he does attend mass with her and most of the village every Sunday. It brings her peace and it leaves him feeling closer to God. 

Today is different. Today Will has no desire to attend church nor be close to God. A part of him worries God will see he feels no emotion, in fact, no grief for his father’s death at all. 

Today doubles as Father’s birthday and the day he hung himself in his study. He didn’t leave a letter or even a little note to say goodbye but everyone knew why he had done it. _The Times_ had told half of London about Father’s gambling habits and the loss of the Schofield fortune he had worked decades to build. He had squandered it all on expensive bets at the races and left them with nothing. It seems he couldn't take the shame and embarrassment from the article and ended it all.

Nan had gone to great lengths to ensure the reason for his death was hidden from the people in Rainford and whispered to Will to keep it to himself when she had gone to pick him up from Eton. Family affairs ought to be kept in the family. 

“C’mon on, pumpkin,” Nan says, nudging him into the church. 

There are about half a dozen people inside. Nan has them sit at the front, always eager to be as close to Father Fairchild as possible. She may be his biggest fan. Mass passes quickly with Will paying little to no attention. He needs this day to be over already. He wants to go home, jump into bed and lose himself to ancient prose. 

Nan had Father laid to rest in the graveyard behind the church. Father was born and raised in Rainford before he left for the bright lights of London, she thought it was fitting he returned home. Will approaches it with trepidation. Nan hands him the bouquet of lilies and carnations she picked from their back garden and Will sets them down before the headstone. 

Nan sniffles as she stares down and clutches onto Will’s arm. 

“He was a good man,” she says with tears in her eyes, “he just wanted to build something great for the family, something that would last forever.”

Will chews the inside of his cheek, she is too focused on the headstone to admonish him for it. He puts his hand over hers because he doesn't know how else to comfort her. He is rather useless sometimes. 

☾

Everyone favours Rainford Castle in the heart of the village but Will prefers Danecroft Castle, the abandoned monstrosity that sits atop a rocky hill. Will treks up it after they return from mass and he makes sure Nan has settled down for nap. Danecroft is beautiful in its own ruinous, harrowing way. He hopes no one is there as a lot of the older pupils like to come up here after school and mess around. 

Sometimes, he swears he can feel the past bleeding through the decayed, mossy walls — that he can hear the monks that used it as a place of worship, that he can see the bored prince whom originally built it lounging in the great hall and demanding more food for his weary guests.

Will walks through the ancient halls with a book in hand and trudges up the winding, stone stairwell to the castle’s only intact tower. It is a relatively small, circular room inside the tower with a trio of long windows with a stunning view of the whole village below. The surrounding forest, the grazing sheep on the rolling green hills, the tight-packed buildings in the Square, the grey houses spread out across the countryside. Will likes sit on the wide windowsill and reads. He opens up the book he brought along and indulges in Basho’s love for the natural world. Basho should wash away this mournful day.

No one should find him up here either but someone does and he shouldn't be surprised that someone is Tom Blake. Tom seems just as surprised to see him. He freezes in the narrow doorway of the tower, dressed in the grey uniform of Rainford Hill and holding his book bag. 

“What — Will?” He says, glancing around, perhaps checking to see if Joe or his friends are here too. “You didn’t come to school…is this where you’ve been all day?”

Will checks his wristwatch. It just turned four. School finished half an hour ago. He counters Tom’s question with his own, “what are you doing here?”

“I — you’re not gonna tell Joe are you?” Tom asks. 

Joe took him up to Danecroft for his fourteenth birthday and told Tom he couldn't come here alone. The castle is almost a thousand years old which means it is not the most stable building in the world. They ought to make it an historical landmark like Rainford Castle or it will not last another decade. 

“No,” Will says, wanting to keep Tom’s trust in him, “but he’s right, you shouldn’t come here alone. It isn’t safe.”

Tom steps further into the room, dropping the his book bag on the floor,“you’re here alone.”

“I’m not, I’m here with Basho,” Will says, showing Tom the book’s flowery cover. 

Tom smirks, “dead poets don’t count.”

"They are the only ones that should.”

Tom keeps walking until he is standing by the window. He nudges Will’s leg with his own. 

“Move up,” he says.

Will scoots to the side and lets Tom sit on the window sill with him as he’s small enough to fit. He has grown taller in the last few months, he nearly reaches Will’s shoulder now. Tom leans back on the crumbling wall and lifting one leg up onto the window sill, he rests an elbow on his knee. He looks out the window, the wind ruffles his curly hair. 

“You haven’t answered my question,” Will says, “what are you doing here? Does Joe know you’re here?”

“Honestly, you’re worse than my mum with all your questions,” Tom rolls his eyes and glances at Will. His eyes always appear impossibly blue no matter the lighting. “Joe dropped me off home and went to see Lauri,” he says, “he’s taking her to down to London to watch a play or somethin’ by some old guy called Softman or Sofa Man or—”

“Do you mean Sophocles?” 

Tom snaps his fingers, “that’s it! Sophocles! Lauri really likes his plays. It was her birthday last week so Joe wanted to surprise her.”

“And that led you here?”

“No, I—” Tom glances away again and licks his lips, when he looks at Will this time a blush fans across his plump cheeks, “bloody hell, um, Max — Max sort of kissed me yesterday and I’ve…sort of been avoiding him?”

Will’s eyebrows rise. It…oddly makes sense if he thinks about it. Max is always with Tom, always following him around and trying his hardest to learn English to spend more time with Tom. He doesn’t know why he didn’t see it before but then, Will knows nothing about love. 

“Why have you been avoiding him?” Will asks.

Tom huffs, “because — because it’s awkward! He’s made it bloody awkward! We were playing Go Fish in my room after school yesterday, y’know, practicing our French and English like you said and he goes and kisses me.” He tugs a hand through his dark hair and sighs, “I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, does this mean he fancies me?”

“Do you fancy him?”

“What?” The blush returns. He says, “Who?”

“Max.”

“Oh, um.” He shrugs, “I don’t know…he’s my best mate.”

“I thought Killy was your best mate,” he says, knowing the angry reaction it will get but wanting to see it anyway because it makes him laugh.

Tom glares at him, “Killy is _not_ my best mate. Who is spreading this bloody rumour?”

Will laughs and he feels a little lighter for the first time all day.

“You and Joe are so annoying,” he says, then sighs once more, “I don’t…I don’t think I see him like that.”

“Then you should tell him,” Will says, “let him know you wouldn't like to risk your friendship. It probably took him a lot of courage to do that, the least you can do is let him know where he stands.”

Tom rubs his face with both hands, “oh, bloody hell. I don’t want to deal with this.”

“The truth always reveals itself, it’s better to do it when it’s in your control,” he says.

“Oh, really?” Tom cocks an eyebrow, “so, why don’t you reveal why you missed school today and why you’re cooped up in here?”

Tom’s questioning exposes just how tired he is. It seems a year of holding in this secret and dreading the anniversary of Father’s death has drained him of all resolve.

He shrugs, aiming for nonchalance but most likely failing. “It’s my father’s birthday today,” he says, “it’s also the anniversary of his death. I went to church with my grandmother and then we visited him in the graveyard.”

He cannot bring himself to add _he hung himself with a rope in his study, my old governess found him._ The words have never left his mouth and his tongue couldn't form them if he tried and he has. 

Tom’s eyes widen, “ _oh_ , I’m — I’m sorry, Will. I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine, we weren’t close,” he says and they weren’t. Father had shipped him off to Eton the minute he turned twelve and he didn't contact him once. It was only gruff instructions to get in the car or move out of the way whenever he returned home for the holidays. “I had to leave Eton when he died since, well, he wasn’t around to pay the tuition fees any longer.”

Again, he cannot bring himself to add _because he gambled our money away on horses and the shame was too much for him._

“I wasn’t close to my father either,” Tom says, looking out the window, “I didn’t even know him. He died a week before I was born in a mining accident near Chelmsford. He saved half the miners lives, stayed behind to make sure everyone got out but the cave collapsed on him when he was only a few metres from the exit. He got a medal of valour from the mayor.” He looks at Will with a faint smile, “Mum named me after him. You’ll never guess what they wanted to call me before he died.”

“What?” He says.

Tom’s smile grows into a grin. “William.”

“ _Tu plaisantes_ ,” he replies. _You’re joking._

“ _C’est vrai!_ ” Tom insists. _It’s true!_ “Ask Joe!”

They both start laughing. Will glances down at his book and Tom looks out of the window. The wind and the rustling leaves are the only sounds for a while. 

Sometime passes before Will says, “a while ago you asked me who my favourite writer was. It took me a while to figure it out but I realise it’s — well,” one corner of his lips quirk up, “it’s William Blake.”

Tom laughs, “ _tu plaisantes.”_

“ _C’est vrai_ ,” Will smiles properly this time, “he wrote _Songs of Innocence and Experience_ and that’s my favourite book of all time, ergo, he is my favourite writer.”

It is partly because it was his mother’s favourite work and it makes him feel closer to her and partly because no other writer holds the same perpetual interest in reconsidering and reframing the assumptions of human thought and social behaviour like William Blake.

Tom nudges Will’s thigh with the tip of his scuffed brogues, “nah, I reckon you like him ‘cause you’re obsessed with me. I don’t blame you.”

“Of course,” Will offers him a lazy smile as he tilts his head back onto the wall, “who wouldn’t be?”

“You’re spending too much time with Joe,” he says, his cheeks reddening again, “you’re almost as annoying as him now.”

“Almost?” He raises an eyebrow, “it’s a good thing school finishes this Friday then, isn’t it? I can spend my whole summer with him and reach his level. Solidarity is important.”

Tom laughs, “idiot.”

It will be his first full summer in Rainford. It will be the first time in a long time he has looked forward to being home for summer. It is a startling thought but not at all surprising that he thinks of Rainford as home now.

* * *

**July**

Will likes to think he is a somewhat of a well-informed person. On the rare occasions Father deigned to talk to him, he drilled in the importance of keeping up with current affairs. 

_Men of our calibre cannot afford to be ignorant of the world around them,_ he would tell Will over breakfast as he flicked through the morning newspaper. _The lower classes don’t care for such things which is why we must be the gatekeepers._

Will had been too intimidated to disagree, in truth, he still would be if Father were alive. If he had been more brave he would have told him the pursuit of knowledge and its distribution shouldn't be ransomed by the upper classes or any sect of people for that matter. It is why he admires Mayor Leslie’s goal to improve the quality of education given to the children of Rainford. 

However, education is something to worry about when school re-opens in September. It ended two weeks ago and Will intends to enjoy the break with full force. He sits in the sun-filled beer garden of the village pub with the _Rainford Review_ in one hand and a pint of beer in the other. He is surrounded by Joe’s many friends but he only speaks to Lauri and Joe and sometimes Kara who sits opposite him. 

The events that make the front page of the _Rainford Review_ rarely make sense _._ Yesterday, the front page focused on a hedgehog with one foot Jonny Braddock’s aunt found in the park. Last week it was Mayor Leslie announcing he would be erecting a statue of his father in Jade Park, who had been the mayor before him. He had perished in the Titanic two years ago and Mayor Leslie thought it was fitting to honour his memory. This was one of the rare occasions the front page made sense. Today, the front page is more nonsensical than usual. 

_VILLAGE COUNCIL RUNS OUT OF TIME TO DISCUSS SHORTER MEETINGS  
_ _Council Meeting Forced Councillors to Put Off Agenda Item. No. 6; A Proposal to Limit the Length of Meetings._

Will shakes his head and turns onto the next page. Rainford is rather peculiar. Council meetings running out of time makes the headlines but the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austria-Hungary throne, at the hands of a Serbian nationalist doesn't. In fact, the Archduke’s death is printed in the small International Affairs section in the right hand corner. 

He sits straighter and glances up at Lauri, who is in the middle of a conversation with Kara about the summer she spent studying in Paris. Her whole family is Austro-Hungarian aren’t they? Max and Lauri still have plenty of family left living in Vienna.

He opens his mouth to tell her about the assassination, “Laur—”

Joe slings an arm around Will’s shoulders and slumps against him. “Will! Put…put that newspaper down!” He shouts, an afternoon spent chugging down beer after beer has slurred his speech, “do you even know what day it is?”

Will says, “no, care to remind me for the umpteenth time in an hour?”

It is July first and the first of July marks—

“My eighteenth!” Joe proclaims and lifts up Will’s beer to down the remaining half in seconds. He wipes his hand with the back of his hand and burps. “And you know what that means?”

Joe came to his house in the late morning with Lauri and Kara in tow declaring that it was his birthday and it was time for a drink-up at _The Round Table._ Lauri and Kara had been laughing as Joe drunkenly demanded Will come with them. The rest of their (really, Joe’s) friends would meet them on the way to the pub and then they would go to Danecroft. 

Lauri had slapped a hand over Joe’s mouth when Joe started singing and Will had to quickly put on his shoes and push Joe away from his house before he woke Nan up and damned them all. 

Will holds back a laugh. “What does it mean, Joe?”

“It means—” Joe snatches the newspaper from Will’s hands and throws it behind them. Will turns in time to see it land in the bushes. Joe grips Will’s chin with two fingers and makes Will face him, “no boring newspapers! You’re only allowed to do two things today, William.” He raises one finger, “Drink as many beers as me,” he raises three fingers, “and have as much fun as me. Do you under—understand, _mon amis?_ ” 

“ _Je comprends que tu es très ivre et que tu devrais probablement arrêter de boire_ ,” he says with a faint smirk. _I understand that you are very drunk and that you should probably stop drinking._

Joe grins. “That’s the spirit!”

* * *

**August**

Will’s easy, splendid summer turns on its axis only five days into the last month of the season. It morphs into a grim tone. A tone that promises to transform anything familiar into something strange, something none of them have ever seen before. 

Will picks up a newspaper on his way out of Rainford Library with Tom. They have just completed two hours worth of French lessons, doing practice drills on conditional tenses. The sun is high in the clear, blue sky as they walk through the Square. Rainford is beautiful in the summer, everything blooms green with all the colours under the rainbow. 

Will frowns at the ominous headline as Tom locks his fingers behind his head and praises the wonderful, warm weather. 

_BRITAIN DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY  
England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty_

“Oi, you even listening?” Tom asks, glancing up at Will. “I don’t know why you read the village newspaper. There’s never anything interesting,” he snorts, “one time Granddad found his hat in a tree and that made the front page, half the village was asking him about it—”

“We’re going to war,” Will says, unable to process what he’s reading. 

“War?” Tom stares,“what? When?”

Will passes him the newspaper as they cross the road to enter Jade Park. War. It fills him with a sense of trepidation. This cannot be good.

“Oh,” Tom pouts and hands him back the paper without a second glance. “I thought you meant we’re going to play a war game like — oh, there’s Max. _Max!_ ”

Will sighs as Tom runs to Max sitting on the park bench by the heart-shaped pond with Killy, throwing crumbs of bread to the eager ducks below. Although, Killy seems to be throwing rocks into the pond. Will hopes he's not trying to hit the ducks. Max smiles when he sees Tom, standing up to punch Tom’s shoulder and run away when Tom tries to return it. Killy laughs as Tom chases Max through the park. Either the kiss was a mistake and Max apologised or Tom told Max he only saw him as a friend and Max took the rejection on the chin.

Despite the war looming over them all, it gladdens him to see the kiss hasn't changed Tom and Max’s friendship. 

Will glances back down at the newspaper. 

_BRITAIN DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY_

If Tom's not worried about it, perhaps he shouldn't either. Will should enjoy the last month of his summer and let the men who have called for such a war worry about it. He frowns when he looks up and sees Tom tackle Max onto the grass and rub his knuckles into Max’s hair. Killy runs over to them jumps on top. Max and Tom both grunt in unison. Then again, Tom has a short attention span and he is only fourteen, revelling in the prime of boyhood. A war in a far off land means little to him. Perhaps, Joe will understand the gravitas of the news. 

☾

_Dear Joe,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I am not surprised you joined the war the second you could but I am surprised you told no one, not me, not your mother, not even Tom._

_Did you think I would try to stop you? I would not. Your life is your own and your choices are yours to make. I only would have told you to think carefully before enlisting as war is not something to be taken lightly._

_Both our grandfathers fought in the Crimean War. I have noticed your grandfather speaks of those days with pride and some strange sense of nostalgia. He speaks of brotherhood and national pride. The Crimean War took my grandfather’s left leg, it tore out a part of him and although he returned home that part of him never did. He never spoke of it either but sometimes, if you looked closely, you could see the bloody battles play out in his eyes._

_I would have relayed this to you should you have told me you wanted to enlist, not to discourage but inform. I would not wish that trauma on my worst enemy and especially not a dear friend like yourself._

_It should come as no surprise to you that the whole village views you as a hero for enlisting so quickly to fight for our country. People stop your brother and mother in the street to praise you._

_Tom seems to bask in it and he talks about you non-stop to anyone who will listen. His brave, big brother off to fight in Germans and save our country. Your grandfather shares Tom’s pride but your mother only worries for you. I do not blame her, no mother wants their son regularly risking death in the midst of battle. It is only two weeks in and everybody seems optimistic it will end by Christmas, I can only hope it does and you will be able to return home, whole and well._

_Yours faithfully,  
Will_

* * *

**October**

"Will," Lauri says one rainy morning in Mrs. Baumer’s study.

He looks up from the translated verse he had been re-writing. 

“Do you think the war will end by Christmas?” Lauri says.

His mouth opens and closes like a fish as he searches for the answers to take that forlorn look off her face. Sorrow paints Lauri into a tragedy and it hurts his heart to watch. 

He never likes to lie. He always chooses the truth and in that instance, the truth is that he doesn't know. Everyone says the war should be done and dusted by Christmas but Will isn’t sure about that. This is not the Anglo-Zanzibar War. This is something none of them have ever seen before. A war of such great mass and scale it pulls more and more people into its path as it drags on. He worries it will consume the world soon. 

“I’m…not sure,” he tells her in his gentlest voice.

“Do you…do you think Joe will be back by then?” She bites her lip, “do you think he would hate me upon his return?”

“Lauri, Joe could never hate you, he’s been smitten since the moment he saw you,” he pauses, unsure if he should even say it but he decides to at the last second, “he — he wants to marry you. You’re very important to him.”

He hopes that will cheered her up a little but then she breaks down crying and Will wonders why he is even allowed near people. She sobs into her hands. Will stares, frozen for a second before he rummages inside his jacket pocket and gives her the handkerchief he keeps in there.

“ _Merci, oh, je suis — je suis navré,_ ” she says, wiping away her tears with it. _I am so sorry._

_“_ It’s okay—”

She starts crying again and Will wants to throw himself out of the huge windows before them. She looks at him with her big, hazel-brown eyes filled with tears. 

“But it won’t be okay, will it? And it is my fault, _j’ai honte_ ,” she sniffles. _I’m ashamed._

“What are you talking about?” He says, resting a hand on her arm at some attempt to comfort her.

“The day after Britain joined the war,” she begins, glancing away, “when he took me to Idun’s tree he proposed…but I said no because, I mean, Germany had just declared war on France the day before and they were already marching their troops into Belgium. You see, I have an older sisters who lives in Antwerp with her husband and children and I was so worried about them I told Joe I could not think about marriage in a time like this.” She looks at him with tears streaming down her cheeks, “I told him I was not sure and….and he didn't take it well. I went to his house to talk to him the next morning, to — to explain but then his mother said he had run off. He joined the war.”

“You don’t know if that was his reason for joining,” Will tells her, “and even if it was, you couldn't have foreseen such a reaction.”

“ _Êt_ _es-vous sûr?_ ” Lauri sniffs. _Are you sure?_

_“_ Yes, he cares about you,” he says, “but…Lauri, I think the more important question here is, do you want to marry him?”

Vaguely, Will wonders when he became the person people went to for advice. He is clueless about life as any of them. 

“ _Oui, je l’aime tellement,”_ she breathes out and sniffs once again. _Yes, I love him so much._

One corner of Will’s mouth lifts up, “then you better tell him, don’t you think?”

Her soft smile reminds him of the rising sun after a bleak night. 

* * *

**December**

_British Ex. Forces_

_  
14/12/14_

_Dear Will,_

_I have only just received the letter you sent back in August. It's been a difficult couple of months and I feel as if I've lived a thousand lifetimes in those months. I've written and re-written this about a dozen times as I know you’re disappointed I ran off and enlisted without a word to you or anyone else but duty called! It will call you when you turn eighteen next month and we can be brothers in arms._

_Or rather that is what I tell anyone who asks but you have come to be my dearest friend and as you like to say, the truth always reveals itself and it is better to reveal it when it's in your control and there is no better control than the pen I am using to write this letter._

_Do you remember that hot day in May when we spent the whole day clearing the orchard of blossoms and I told you I wanted to marry Lauri? Those weren’t the words of a daydreaming man. I asked her to marry me under Idun’s tree a few days after the war was declared. She said no and I couldn't bear it. In the face of heartbreak, I thought war to be less painful._

_Let me tell you something. It isn’t._

_That first battle at the Marne and every battle since I have never seen carnage like this and when I close my eyes I see nothing but carnage. I am writing this 150yd from Fritz and the moon is bright, so we bend and walk quietly onto the road running diagonally across the front into the Bosche line._

_We started away just after dawn from our camp and I think it was about an hour later that we encountered the enemy. They were on the opposite side of the valley and as we came over the brow of the hill they opened on us with rifle fire and shrapnel from about 900 yards. We lost three officers and about 100 men were killed and wounded in that half hour. I went from Lance Corporal to Sergeant in that half hour. I don’t want any more days like that one. Thankfully, we drove the Bosche back and held them there for eight days. I cannot tell you all I should like to, as I don’t have the time and it would never reach you._

_But what I can tell you before the Bosche return with their damned great bombs to wipe us out is that I received Lauri’s letter the same time as yours and she accepted my proposal. I thought I had gone mad from the living in the trenches too long but it was real! She wants to be my wife if you can believe it!_

_I don’t know when I’ll return home for leave but I hope it’s soon as I have a beautiful woman to marry. Ihave missed Tom’s birthday and it’s Christmas next week, a horrid time to be away from home, made worse by the fact this bloody war is nowhere close to ending but Lauri wants to marry me and that’s all I need to keep me going._

_The next time we will see each other will be at my wedding and as my best man, I expect you there._

_Your friend,  
Joe_

_P.S. I can’t eat anymore bully beef. Tell my mum to sneak in a slice of cherry pie in her next angry letter to me._

_P.P.S. I hear stories of men being shamed into joining the war but I ask that you don’t. Please stay and look after Tom for me. I miss him dearly and I trust you to keep him on the straight and narrow._


	3. 1915 - Tom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom has a rather inconvenient revelation about Will. Will ponders his future. Lauri prepares to wed Joe. Despite everyone's hopes, the war drags on.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ 

* * *

**1 9 1 5**

* * *

**January**

Rainford without Joe is strange to say the least. Tom wakes up some mornings and turns in his bed, expecting to find Joe still snoozing or buttoning up his shirt as he’s late for his paper round (again) but the bed is empty and the room is silent and he feels Joe’s absence more than ever in those moments. Mum ranted for the first few days when she saw the letter Joe had left on the kitchen table then she cried for a week straight and Tom’s heart broke at the sight. Anything he said only seemed to make her more upset and Granddad told him to let her process the news in her own time. 

It seems she’s still processing it as she walks around with the same look of worry even four months after Joe left. Sometimes, Tom wonders if he’s missing something, some great piece of information that should make him pace and frown with worry like Mum but then Granddad reminds him that Joe is a hero for going out and protecting his country.In turn, Tom likes to remind Mum that Joe will be home soon for leave and Mum will give him that sad smile and tell him to pass her the flour. 

Tom smiles at the thought of Joe’s return as he makes his way through the farmers’ market. He has asked Joe when he’s coming back home in every letter he has sent him and Joe always answers with uncertainty. Tom vibrates with excitement whenever he thinks of it. He can already see himself running to hug him at the train station and he can picture the crookedness of Joe’s answering grin to its exact degree. He can’t wait to hear all the amazing stories about life as a soldier. He must have so many. If they are anything like Granddad’s stories about his days in the Crimean War, Tom will play them out with Max and Killy. 

Until then, it’s simply a waiting game and although Tom isn’t the most patient person in the world there is nothing that can be done about it. 

Tom wraps his scarf tighter around his neck and walks past a stall packed with every kind of lettuce and cabbage under the sun — or the snow really, since it has been snowing all week. This morning, Tom woke up to a sock thrown onto his face as Mum told him to get up and get down to the market. The shopping list she quickly wrote down is short. A small bag of cornstarch, a dozen lemons, four courgettes, and — Tom freezes — he forgot the leeks.. He groans, shifts up the large paper bags stuffed with vegetables in his arms to stop them from falling and marches over to the nearest stall. He can’t see where he’s going all too well due to the heavy bags so he’s not surprised when he bumps into someone. 

“Bloody hell, pardon, I'm sorry,” the person sputters, turning around to face Tom, “sorry, are you — oh, hello, Tom.”

Tom looks up, smiling immediately when he sees it’s none other than William Schofield dressed in a great big winter coat with flecks of snow in his caramel brown hair and cheeks bitten red from the cold. Will returns his smile with his own version, ever so faint and ever so soft and Tom’s heart skips a beat. It’s a little confusing but there’s something about Will that makes him feel odd. Perhaps odd isn’t the right word, fluttery may be more accurate, like the ground is wobbly and each step is sure to make him trip. 

“Hey, Will,” Tom says, still smiling up at him. He wants to brush the snow from Will’s hair or at least take off his own woolly hat and plop it over Will’s head. It’s quite distracting. Winter on William Schofield is quite distracting.

“Hello,” Will glances behind Tom, probably looking for his mother as she often joins him when the farmers’ market opens every Sunday. His breath comes out in puffs of white as he speaks, “What are you doing here?”

Tom gestures to the bags in his arms with his chin, “isn’t it obvious?” He grins, “Mum’s been teaching me the art of bakery for the last few weeks. We’re making a vegetable tart today with leeks, goat’s cheese and lemons.” 

The week before Christmas, Mum had been crying in the kitchen when Tom had asked her to teach him how to make her famous cherry pies. He hoped it would distract her from the war and it had but it had surprised him how much he enjoyed baking.

_Sweetheart, baking isn’t about perfection,_ Mum had said when Tom’s pie had come out of the oven burnt, _it’s about dealing with disappointment. Accept that things may go wrong and keep going on._

Often, he feels like he's good at very little. He doesn't have Will’s talent for languages or Joe’s charm but baking made sense to him. He likes how often he surprises himself with the things he makes and more than anything he likes the delight on someone’s face when they try his food.

“I promised Mum I’d make dinner tonight, but I forgot a few things,” Tom says. 

“How — how is your mother?” Will asks. 

Tom shrugs, “better. She was a bit angry, furious actually, she smashed up a few plates when she found out Joe had enlisted but she’s better now. I think the news of Joe and Lauri’s engagement lifted up her spirits. Mum, Lauri and Mrs. Baumer have been busy planning the wedding. It’s a good distraction for her I think, gives her something to be excited about.”

“I’m glad she’s feeling better.”

Tom shrugs again. “you should come round tonight. I reckon it’ll blow your socks off mate. Best vegetable tart you’ll ever have.”

Will says, “I can’t, I have to finish some translations for Lauri. I was going to the library to grab a few books.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot,” Tom says, stamping the disappointment down, “yeah, you should do that—”

One of the paper bags rip and the carrots and lemons tumble onto the snow-covered street. Tom curses as Will quickly crouches down and picks them all up in a few seconds. He gets a spare bag from one of the stalls and puts them in. 

“Look, here,” Will says as he takes a bag from Tom, leaving him with only one. 

“Thanks,” Tom says with a faint laugh. 

Will shrugs, “it’s fine, come on, I’ll help you get them home.”

They start walking towards the statue of the fat man by _The Round Table_ when Tom remembers he still has to buy leeks. 

“I'll wait,” Will nods his head to the market behind them. 

He waits for Tom as he grabs a couple of leeks, pays for them, stuffs them in the paper bag and jogs to catch up with Will. 

“ _Prochaine fois,”_ Will says as they cross the road to walk up the steep hill that leads away from the Square.

“Next time?” Tom replies. 

Will says, “next time you bake something, let me know, I would like to try to it. I think it will be quite tasty. If Joe has your grandfather’s charm, I think you have your mother’s cooking skills.”

Tom glances away as his cheeks burning. He blushes too often these days.

“Don’t say that,” Tom mumbles, kicking at loose branch on the ground, “you might try my food and die.”

He makes the mistake of glancing up at Will then, more snow has fallen into his hair and it now flops over his forehead in caramel waves and, actually, he has quite a nice mouth — Tom looks away, his gaze flitting up to the naked branches of the trees that line the winding street. Joe running off to enlist must have set something off in him. Maybe he’s losing his mind?

“So,” he clears his throat and only looks at Will when his heart has calmed down, “are we still meeting on Saturday?”

Will nods, “yes, did you finish your notes?”

“Almost,” Tom says, “I’ll be done by Saturday.”

Since the war erupted seven months ago, everything has felt tense and he’s thankful Will has maintained their French lessons despite how busy he is with schoolwork and translations. Tom clings to the normalcy of it all. A few days after Tom’s fifteenth birthday, Will said his French has improved drastically and he was ready to read French literature. Tom is on his second book or rather play, _Tartuffe,_ about a creepy man called Tartuffe who tries to trick this religious family. Tom is half-way through, both confused and enthralled by the antics. 

“Why am I reading _Tartuffe_ again?” Tom asks as they cross the street again, walking up the steep hill lined with grey cottages. “It’s weird.”

“Because it exposes you to conversational French,” Will tells him, “it should improve your reading and writing skills and honestly, French literature does not get any better than _Tartuffe_. Study it well, I’m going to test you on it.”

Tom groans, “you’re a bloody masochist.”

“If masochism is the best way for you to become fluent in French, then so be it.”

Tom bites his lip to stop himself from smiling. He doesn’t add that if masochism is the best way to spend time with Will, then so be it.

☼

It's going to be Will’s birthday in two weeks. The first day of February will mark his eighteenth and his eighteenth means Will is old enough to enlist and go off to some far off field in France and fight. Tom has only just adjusted to Joe’s constant absence, if Will disappears too he will feel more lost than ever in Rainford. Yeah, he would still have Killy (even though he’s a little nuts) and Max, things aren’t awkward anymore since Max admitted the kiss was a joke just to freak him out. But here’s the thing, the thought of Killy and Max’s absence doesn’t bring a rising of wave panic like it does with Will.

He knows fighting in the war is important, protecting your country and _blah, blah, blah_ but the war already has his brother, can’t it let him keep Will? Better yet, can’t it end already and return Joe to them? 

Tom doesn’t have much — if any — money to buy Will a worthwhile present (which would definitely be some old book) so he decides to bake him one instead. He thought about making him the leek and goat’s cheese tart he baked last week (which turned out to be delicious) but it’s not fun enough for a birthday.

They are playing football in Max’s back garden, Tom’s head isn’t really in the game as his mind runs through every possible idea for a present when he sees the ball flying at him in his periphery. Tom ducks just in time, it misses his face by an inch. He spins and glares at Max standing by the open kitchen door. The moment Tom saw the snow in the garden had thawed out, he ran over to Max’s house and asked him to play.

“Are you mental?” He asks, throwing his hands in the air, “that nearly knocked me out.”

“No, but you are stupid,” Max snaps back. Sometimes Tom misses the days Max could barely string a sentence together, “you are not paying attention.”

Tom rubs a hand down his face, “right, sorry, I’m just…it’s Will’s birthday soon and — what?” He says when Max rolls his eyes. It usually means Max has a pretty unfavourable comment sitting at the tip of his tongue. “What is it?”

“Mother says if I have nothing nice to say I should say nothing at all,” Max grumbles, kicking at the grass,.

“No, you just say it in German,” Tom says. 

“Why do you care about Will’s birthday so much?” He glances away with a grimace, “he certainly does not. _Tu es obsédé._ ”

Tom glares at him again, “I’m not obsessed with him. He’s my friend. It’s just — it’s his birthday soon and I want to get him a good present. I got you something on your birthday didn't I?”

Max doesn’t look convinced, he stares at Tom for a moment too long with furrowed eyebrows before he shrugs, “Lauri says the simplest answer is often the correct one.”

“And what’s the simplest answer?”

“A cake.”

Tom’s eyebrows rise. “Of course!” He snaps his fingers, “why didn’t I think of that?”

Max shrugs once more, “because you are an idiot?”

“Oh yeah? Let’s have another match,” Tom says as he walks over to shed to pick up the football. He turns back to Max, spinning the ball atop his fingers, “and then we’ll see who the idiot is.”

“ _Ja, du bist es.”_

_“Nous avons convenu que vous ne pouvez parler que le français ou l’anglais,_ ” Tom says, dropping the ball onto the grass and rolling it under his boot. _We agreed that you can only speak French or English._

“ _Oui, oui, botter le ballon,_ ” Max replies as spreads his arms apart. _Yes, yes, kick the ball._

Tom wins the match and Max chases him around the garden for a good hour, threatening to strangle him before Mrs. Baumer calls them in for lunch. 

☼

Tom spends the next week pondering ideas for the kind of cake he should make. It has to be the greatest cake Will has ever had. He’s a posh lad, isn’t he? He must have fancy cakes all the time. Tom is so determined for it to be perfect that he runs after Will’s grandmother when he spotsher leaving the cafe, _Green Brew._ He must have caught her in a good mood as she doesn’t throw him her usual glare whenever she sees him.

“Anything with toffee,” Mrs. Schofield tells him as Tom follows her into the post office, “he’s had a weakness for toffee since he was a little boy.”

Tom spends the whole day before Will’s eighteenth in the kitchen trying to perfect the recipe. Mum offers to help him but Tom declines, he needs to make this on his own. Max tries to lure him out to play some footy in the garden or go climb Idun’s tree but Tom declines him too. 

“I will go ask Killy,” Max says, pouting in the doorway as Tom whisks the eggs, sugar and syrup together in a bowl. 

Tom glances at the instructions Mum wrote down for him before she left for her shift in the post office. She works there during the winter months as business for their cherry farm usually dies down around this time. 

“Go on then,” Tom says.

A moment passes before Max lets out a string of curses in French and marches over to him. He grabs a spare apron off one of the chairs and wraps it around his waist. 

“ _Que voulez-vous que je fasse_?” Max asks as he comes to stand beside Tom. _What do you want me to do?_

_“Faire la glaçage,”_ Tom says, smiling to himself a little. _Make the icing._ He points to the small dining table behind them where the ingredients sit, “ _les mélanger tous ensemble.” Mix them all together._

_“_ Yes, master,” Max says. He walks over to the dining table and pauses just as he grabs the large bowl, “you do know there are other people in the world? Will Schofield is not the only one.”

Tom’s cheeks heat up, he turns away so Max can’t see his face. “I’m very aware there are other people in the world, I just want to do something nice.”

Behind him, Max snorts and says, “ _klar, sag dir das immer wieder._ ”

Tom ignores his little comment and keeps whisking. He has no idea what it means but he doubts Max is praising is cooking skills.

* * *

**February**

Tom is grinning as he walks to Will’s house a few days later. Will turns eighteen today and he plans on making it a brilliant day for him. Mum assured him his cake was great and he had to slap Max’s hand away numerous times to stop him from trying to steal a slice. It took Tom (mostly Tom) and Max most of the day to finish the cake as their first two attempts were disasters. Max walked out on the third attempt and left Tom to finish the cake on his own. He asked Max if he wanted to join him in bringing the cake to Will but he shook his head and made some (most likely) rude comments in German.

Tom carries the box as he walks up the stone path to Will’s house at the edge of the village. With a stone facade wrapped in greenery and mullion windows, it sits on a low hill, surrounded by tall trees that stretch out to an open field that blooms with vivid wildflowers in the spring and summer months. After Mayor Leslie’s sprawling estate behind Rainford Castle, Will has the biggest home in the village. 

_It’s not my house,_ Will would say when Joe commented on its extravagance, _it’s my grandmother’s._ It has sixteen acres of land, an open barn and a paddock somewhere behind the lavish back garden, two bathrooms and five bedrooms which confused Tom since Will’s grandparents only had one son. Then, he overhead Mum telling one of her friends that Mrs. Schofield had wanted lots of children but then the Crimean War broke out and God had only seen fit to bless with her one. 

Mum says Mrs. Schofield wants to pass the house onto Will so he can raise his family there with as many children as he wants. His patience and willingness to help anyone makes Tom think Will would be a good husband and an even better father.

Tom comes up to the house and makes sure to knock carefully on the heavy mahogany door and waits. Four years ago, Mrs. Schofield lost her priceless broach in Jade Park and Tom came to her house to return it, he had thought he knocked on the door at a normal volume but the way Mrs. Schofield yanked the door open and ranted at him for ‘banging too loudly on my poor door’ you would have thought he tried to bring all of England to her house for a riot. Madwoman. She probably won’t let him come in and if she doesn’t he’ll ask her to give Will the cake.

The door opens and Tom straightens, expecting Mrs. Schofield and her unimpressed stare but to his pleasant surprise, it’s Will standing on the other side. He must have just woken up as he’s still dressed in his pyjamas and his hair is messier than usual, sticking up at all angles. He’s used to seeing Will in the drab, grey uniform of Rainford Hill or those woolly jumpers his grandmother loves to knit for him so it’s a bit of shock to see him sleepy and dressed in loose, brightly patterned pyjamas. Tom bites his lip. It’s an endearing look.

Will lets out a yawn and says, “Tom, what—”

“Wake up, sleepy head!” Tom says, shoving the box against Will’s chest unceremoniously. 

Confusion plays across Will’s face as he takes the box. His fingers brush over Tom’s and Tom quickly pulls his hands back and shoves them in his coat pockets, ignoring the tingly warmth that Will’s accidental touch left. 

“What — what’s going on?” Will asks, glancing at Tom and down at the box wrapped in a bow.

Tom smirks, “it’s your birthday, isn’t it?” He spreads his arm out wide, “happy birthday!”

Realisation slowly dawns on Will’s face as he stares at Tom. A few moments pass before he says, “right, yes, completely forgot…” he glances down at the box again, “is this a present?”

Tom nods, “yeah, I, uh, I made it. I’ve been baking more and more these days I thought I’d make you something.”

Will is quiet again, watching Tom with the same curious look he wears when he comes across a Latin verse that eludes translation. It makes him nervous for some reason. It knots his stomach in a hundred loops. Tom isn’t sure what Will is staring at but he better hurry because it’s started to snow again and he can feel his face heating up from the intensity of Will’s gaze. 

“Are you going to stare at me all day or are you going to let me in?” He says, becoming impatient and red-faced, “it’s freezing out here, mate.”

Will blinks and moves aside then, “right, sorry, come in.”

Tom grumbles a _thank you_ and steps inside, sighing as the warmth of the house envelops him. They are in the small entrance hall between two doors, the mahogany front door behind him that Will has just shut and the door that is half glass and half wood that leads to the main lobby.Tom kicks off his boots and hangs his coat on the hooks nailed into the wall, leaving him in his trousers, shirt and suspenders.

Will pushes the half-glass door open and leads him down the hallway and into the plush, open living room. The smell of burnt wood lingers in the air from the fireplace with faint notes of strawberries and tea. It makes Tom wonder what his house must smell like. Max said it smelt tobacco and leather in the colder months and freshly baked cherry pies in the warmer months. He’ll take that. Max’s house smells light, zesty and fruity. On the rare occasions Tom goes to Killy’s house, it always smells like something that shouldn’t be burning is burning.

“Where’s your nan?” Tom asks as he circles the sofa and sits down on the plump armchair. 

Will places the box on the low coffee table and sits down on the sofa. He yawns again and says, “in bed, she’s not feeling well.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Tom asks.

Will waves a hand, “Yes, yes, it’s just her hip acting up again. She’s usually up and gossiping within a few days.”

Tom laughs, “good to know…” He leans forward in the armchair, “did you just wake up? It’s almost noon. I didn’t peg you for a night owl.”

Will tugs a hand through his hair, making it even messier than before. “I was up all night finishing off some Ovid translations, the deadline is tomorrow and I’m still only half-way done—” he glances at the box, “what is this?”

“Oh, um,” Tom leans back, feeling nervous all of a sudden, “uh, open it.”

Will throws him a confused glance before he leans forward and undoes the ribbon on the box. Tom bites his lip, his pulse quickening as Will pulls off the lid and looks inside. Will’s eyebrows rise and he looks at Tom. Tom really hopes he’s not blushing right now but he can feel the tips of ears burning. Bloody hell, what’s wrong with him?

He gives Will his best grin and spreads his arms wide, “happy birthday!”

Will blinks, glances down at the cake and back at Tom. “You...got this?”

Tom nods.

Will blinks again, “…for me?”

Tom’s eyebrows knit together. “Uh, yeah? It’s your birthday present?” He wrings his hands together as Will watches him with that curious look again, “do — do you like it?”

“Did you make this?” Will asks.

This is turning into a game of twenty-one questions. 

“Yeah,” Tom says, standing up and walking between the sofa and armchair to head into the open doorway behind them that leads into the kitchen. He rummages through the cupboards until he finds the plates, he takes three, some cutlery and walks back into the living room.

“Let’s eat!” He beams down at Will before he pushes the cardboard walls of the box down to reveal the sticky toffee sponge cake he spent hours trying to perfect it. 

He’s still not completely happy with it but Mum insisted it was perfect and whenever his mother smiles at him she can convince him of almost anything. Max’s attempt at icing was, quite frankly, terrible. It took Tom two more attempts to get to the icing to a golden shade of brown and to get it to drizzle down the edge of the cake like that. 

He leans down and cuts into the cake and slides a slice onto a saucer for Will. He passes it to him along with a fork and stands back up. The nerves return in the form of butterflies swooping in his stomach as Will digs his fork into the cake and pops it into his mouth. 

Tom doesn’t realise he’s wringing his hands again until Will looks up at him and says, “is this toffee?”

“Yeah, um, your nan told me you like toffee best so…” he nibbles on his lower lip, “do you like it?”

Will takes another bite and offers Tom a lovely smile that sets the butterflies off in his stomach. “It’s perfect.”

The hours of labour and frustration in the kitchen are suddenly worth it. Tom beams. “Happy birthday, Will!”

“Tom,” Will looks at him then.

“What?”

Will looks unsure for a moment, biting on the inside of his cheek before he sets the saucer and fork on the table.

“Will?” Tom says as Will stands up and walks around the table.

Will leans down, wraps his arms around Tom and pulls Tom flush against him. It takes Tom a belated second to realise that Will _is hugging him._ It catches him by surprise because, well, Will isn’t the most affectionate person. He’s a little awkward and introverted as he prefers to keep to himself and if Tom thinks back, the most affection Will has shown is the few times he has patted Tom’s shoulder or back.The hug sends Tom’s heart beating a hundred times faster for two reasons.

One, Will smells good. A warm, woody, creamy scent of dark spices and vanilla. He always smells good but this close it has Tom’s insides feeling wobbly, like they have turned to jelly.

Two , Will's hair tickles Tom's cheek as he whispers in his ear in a deep voice still gravelly from sleep, “Thank you, Tom.” Ever so lightly, his lips graze the shell of Tom’s ear and Tom forgets how to breathe.

Will pulls back, smiling before he returns to the sofa and continues eating the cake. Tom doesn’t move, feeling stiff and flustered from Will’s unexpected hug. He’s not sure how long he stands there, wide-eyed and unmoving, as Will finishes his slice of cake but it must be a while because Will throws him a concerned look. 

He says. “Are you okay?”

Will’s gentle voice snaps him out of his stupor. He shakes his head, returning Will’s concern with an easy grin. “I—I’m fine,” he says, waving a hand dismissively as he goes to sit down next to Will on the sofa.

Will shuffles to the side and Tom sits down, he opens his mouth to ask him if he wants another slice when he notices a chunk of icing stuck at the corner of Will’s mouth. 

“Will,” Tom smirks and gestures to the corner of his own mouth, “you’ve got some icing here.”

Will swipes it off with his thumb and dips his thumb into his mouth. Tom looks away, red cheeks and his stomach knotting itself into a mess. He leans forward and starts cutting into the cake. “Do — do you want some more?”

Will stands up, “please.” He walks around the sofa and pushes past the closed kitchen door by the fireplace. “I’m making tea, would you like some?”

“Yeah, thanks, mate,” Tom shouts back as he slides a piece onto Will’s plate and another on his. Tom looks out at the huge bay window to the side. It’s started snowing again, coating the front garden in a faint sheen of white. 

Will comes back carrying a flowery teapot anda pair of mugs on a tray. He sets it down on the coffee table for Tom. He starts making their teas, Tom is about to remind him he likes two sugars in his when Will slips in two sugars without being told. Tom smiles and scoops up a bite of cake. It’s peaceful for a moment. The wind sends the branches of the great beech tree rattling against the bay windows. The teaspoon clink, clinks against the cup as Will stirs it. The sweetness of the toffee cake melts in his mouth. 

“ _Ici_ ,” Will says, sliding a mug over to Tom before grabbing his own and sitting down next to him. _Here._

“ _Merci_ ,” Tom says as he sets the plate down and picks up the mug. He blows the steam off and takes a sip. Tom lets Will drink some of his tea before he turns to him and says, “so, you’re eighteen now…”

Will looks at him, “right..”

Tom sets the mug down, “you’re eighteen now, you can enlist…are you going to?”

“I…” Will chews on the inside of his cheek, a habit Tom is finding increasingly charming, “I—I don’t know. Nan doesn’t want me to. She thinks I’ll end up like my grandpa. She said his body might have returned but his mind died somewhere in Crimea.”

“My grandad came back from Crimea,” Tom says. 

“Yes, but did you know him before the war?” Will asks,“you should ask your mum if she knew him before war. It changes people.” 

Tom looks out at the falling snow in the front garden, “do you think — do you think if Joe comes back he’ll be different?” 

“I don’t know, Tom,” Will sighs as he slides his mug onto the table. “I hope not but not all change is bad.”

Tom looks at Will. He has leant forward with his elbows settled on his knees and his gaze locked on his clasped hands. His expression is one of deep thought.

“I don’t think you should,” Tom says. 

Will startles, as if remembering Tom is in the room. He looks at him, “what?”

“I said I don’t think you should enlist,” Tom says, trying to keep his voice and heart steady. “I think—” he clears his throat and forces himself to keep speaking, “I think you should stay. Joe is doing a pretty good job of it, I reckon it’ll be over soon and he’ll be home before you even have to leave.”

“What makes you think it’ll be over soon?” Will asks and it’s just another reason Tom likes being around Will. He never makes Tom feel stupid for the jokes he makes or outlandish things he does. 

“Granddad said,” Tom replies with a shrug, “he said the Germans don’t stand a chance.”

Will makes a noncommittal noise and goes back to staring at his hands. Tom has the sudden urge to reach out and bury his fingers in Will’s mop of wavy, caramel brown hair. He bets it’s silky to touch and it smells faintly of vanilla like Will’s neck. Will looks at him and Tom quickly looks away, embarrassed at being caught staring. He shoots up, pacing by the table because he needs something to do before he buries his fingers in Will’s hair.

Will looks worried, “Tom?”

“I just—” Tom stops pacing to stare at the fireplace still packed with last night’s burnt wood. He curls his hands into fists at his side as the words come spewing out, “I just want you to stay in Rainford with me,” he says, quickly adding, “and — and your nan.” He spins to face Will, “and Lauri and Max and hell, even Killy. I think you should stay. Rainford is boring but it’s better than the frontline.”

“Tom, it’s okay,” Will slumps back on the sofa, he lifts his foot and rests it on his thigh. “I’m staying.” He smiles, “I promised Joe I’d keep you out of trouble, didn’t I?”

Tom grins, delighted at the prospect of Will staying in Rainford indefinitely. “Shut up,” he laughs as he walks to sit next to him on the sofa, “I’m an angel. Oh!” An idea springs to mind as he bounces up and down on the sofa, “oh, oh! Let’s make snow angels!”

Will looks like he’s about to object so Tom grabs his hand, leaps off the sofa and drags him out of the living room and down the hallway to the back garden. “It’ll be fun, c’mon!”

* * *

**April**

_Dear Tom,_

_How are things going with you now? I expect like the rest of us you will be glad when the better weather sets in for there is no doubt about it, it has been rough lately. Since I last wrote to you we have shifted to another part of the line and it is a warm shop, for both sides must have all guns they can find and it is nothing but one long duel all day and every day but thank goodness it gives over a bit a night so that I can get on with their work. You see of a night the flashes of the guns can be seen so plainly that is why they don't fire a lot then. Just on our right our people retook some trenches we had lost, oh what a rough time the poor sods had, snow and mud as much as you like and they had to lay in it for two days and grub could not be got to them._

_I expect there have been a few more from Paddington called up by now, it seems if the government mean to have all the men they want and if they can’t get them one way they will another, and it certainly looks as if they will be wanted for out here. It worries me. I don’t want Will to be dragged out here and I’m sure you don’t either. He belongs in Rainford with his beloved poets and I expect you to be fluent in French when I return home in August. I know it’s far away but at least I’m coming back. I can’t to see you, to see everyone. I can’t wait to marry Lauri._

_I meant to ask in my last letter, has Myrtle had any babies?Mum mentioned Mayor Leslie’s dog was sniffing around her and they disappeared into the bushes for a while. I reckon she wants babies off Myrtle more than she does off me. Killy’s mum told her St. Bernard puppies fetch for a fair amount and she’s had pound signs in her eyes ever since._

_I see by the papers that the air raids have been busy in England again. It’s times like this I’m glad Rainford is too far in the countryside for anyone to bother us. You know, we have the taubes over our hospital nearly every day or night and I can tell you we got some starts at times. The nearest we have to them since I have been here is just one yard from the main door, at 12.30 it blew in two pairs of double doors and shattered on end of the building to bits but not a great deal of damage to life which after all is the main thing. The arrangements we work in is five or six days up the line and four or five down if you are lucky. Of course at times these arrangements go to pot when there is an attack and we get a warm time and I should like to enlarge on these things but of course you understand I can’t._

_Give my best to everyone._

_Your favourite brother,  
Joe_

_P.S. Do not touch anything on my side of our bedroom. I’ll know if you have!_

* * *

**May**

“There,” Tom says as he dumps the last wicker basket brimming with cherry blossoms next to Mum’s deck chair. 

It’s that time of the year again, where they spend hours, sometimes days clearing the orchard free of fallen blossoms and collecting them for the potpourri packages they sell down in London. It’s the first time since Joe went to visit their cousins up in Newcastle almost five years ago they have done the clean up without him. It feels even stranger than he thought it would. Although, he is thankful Will, Max and Lauri volunteered (or rather, bribed with free cherry pies by Mum) to help, it doesn’t feel as fun without Joe here to Tom tease about being to slow. 

Mum slips a paper bookmark into the copy of _Vilette_ she has been reading as they all worked to clear the orchard and looks at the dozens of blossom filled baskets around her. Max stands beside him, draining his glass of the orange juice Mum brought for their break. Nearby, Will sits against one of the trees, shaded from the hot midday sun, reading some old latin book as Lauri snoozes on his shoulder, her own book forgotten in her lap. They are almost finished,they have been in the orchard since early morning and it is almost noon now. There is still more to clear near the back but that will take only an hour or two tomorrow. 

Mum casts a glance around at the baskets, casually inspecting them for any faults before she looks up at Tom and Max.

“Okay, you can go,” she says. 

Tom turns to Max. They cheer and high-five each other. 

“ _But—”_ Mum says, raising a finger.

Tom sighs. 

“—I want you back by supper, if you’re muddy you’re washing and drying those clothes yourself.”

“Okay,” Tom says, a little surprised at how reasonable the condition was. 

“And _you,_ ” she jabs her finger at Max, who finishes off his glass of orange juice and wipes his hand with the back of his mouth. “Look after him, will you? I don’t want him getting hurt.” She points at Tom, giving him the same stern look, “and _you—”_ she nods her head at Max, “look after him. I don’t want either of you coming back with broken legs or faces.”

“Mum, we’re not going to war,” Tom says with a roll of his eyes, “it’s just the rugby tryouts. You didn’t give Joe this much hassle when he went.”

He’s been waiting two years to go to tryouts since Mum wouldn’t let him go until he was fifteen, the same age as Joe when he went.

Mum’s hand drops and that melancholy look settles over her face whenever Joe or the war is mentioned. 

Internally, Tom curses and Max jabs in the ribs with his elbow, muttering, “ _bon joué_.” _Well done._

Tom throws him a glare before he sighs and leans down to hug Mum. Joe ran off to enlist nearly a year ago now and it still haunts her, while the rest of the village celebrated the breakout of the war she had sunk to her knees that night and wept for her eldest son. Will says it’s natural for any mother to worry about her children. Tom supposes he’s right. Elsie Blake is the biggest worrier of them all. She only started letting Tom walk home alone without waiting for Will a month ago. He still waits for Will of course but that’s not the point. 

Mum sniffs against his shoulder and rubs his back as she returns his hug. 

“Sorry, Mum,” Tom says in her ear, “it’ll be fine, I’ll be back in time for supper.”

She’s smiling when he pulls back to glance down at her. 

“I know, pet.” She says, her Geordie roots coming through. She hasn’t called him pet since Joe left. He didn’t realise he would miss it so much. She pats his cheek, stands up and turns to face Will and Lauri snoozing under one of the cherry trees. She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “Will!” 

He startles awake but Lauri remains asleep on his shoulder. Joe said she’s a heavy sleeper. Will rubs his eyes and looks over at them. “Wha— _yes_?”

Mum clasps her hands together, “Will, darling, could you please escort the boys to—”

“Escort?” Tom and Max say in unison. Tom frowns and says, “Mum, c’mon, I’m _fifteen,_ Max is fourteen, we don’t—”

“Yeah and Max only turned fourteen yesterday,” Mum says, throwing them a quick glance before she turns back to Will. “Will, could you please escort the boys to rugby tryouts at Rainford Hill? Cheer ‘em on, keep ‘em out of trouble. The tryouts can get a bit rowdy.”

Tom opens his mouth to object to that but then he remembers what happened last year. A fight broke out when Jonny Braddock’s older brothers didn’t make the cut and Joe had to break up the fight but ended up with a black eye. Everyone in Rainford takes rugby pretty seriously. Half the village turns up for the tryouts, people hoping that someone in their family will achieve the coveted spot on the Rainford Ravens. Joe had the spotlight for three years, he brought the village countless regional wins and three national trophies. Since he has been at war, the village has been waiting for the spring tryouts to see who might take Joe’s spot. No one can, of course, Joseph Blake is one of a kind but Tom can give it a go, right? He is Joe’s brother after all. 

Max sets the empty cup down next to Mum’s deck chair. He folds his arms over his stomach, “Will has better things to do than—”

“ _Will_?” Mum prompts. 

Will nods, “yes, I can take them if you want.”

Max mutters, what are most likely, curses in German while Tom tries to squash his growing panic. Normally, he doesn’t mind acting foolish in front of everyone because he doesn’t care what they think but Will isn’t anyone. He’s — he’s….He’s _Will_ , okay? It’s different. Damn it. It’s not like he plans on actually getting on the rugby team, he’s doing it for a laugh and if he does, well that’s just great isn’t it but — Will being there changes things. He doesn’t want to look like an idiot in front of him. 

“Why doesn’t Lauri take us?” Tom asks. He doesn’t mind looking like an idiot in front of Lauri. “She’s not doing anything.”

“Not doing anything?” Mum says, turning to face him with her hands on her hips, “did you forget she’s engaged to your brother and she has a wedding to plan?”

_Oh._ Tom resists the urge to roll his eyes again. It’s all Mum talks about and as annoying as it can be, he’s glad she has something to distract from the fact her eldest son is off fighting. Anytime she thinks about it, Tom can tell she’s close to tears. The wedding is a double blessing. Mum isn’t _as_ sad about Joe and Joe is returning in August marry Lauri. All Tom knows about his role in the wedding is that he is the ring-bearer. 

“We’re planning the wedding while you’re off getting beat up on a field,” Mum says, "I don’t know why this village loves that violent sport so much.”

Rainford and Tom’s school, Rainford Hill, only has one sports team and it is the rugby team. Rainford goes mad for rugby which Tom has never really understood as he prefers football but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy watching the games. Of course, the games aren’t the same without Joe. Nothing is the same without Joe. 

He should probably be offended that Joe chose Will over him for best man considering _Tom is his brother_ but then Will walks around in those jumpers his nan knits for him or he takes Tom to Danecroft Castle whenever he asks and Tom thinks, _oh, right, Will really is the best man._

“We must leave,” Max glances at his wristwatch, “the tryouts begin in twenty minutes.”

“Will!” Tom calls, “let’s go.”

Will nudges Lauri awake, who yawns and takes her head of Will’s shoulder. Will mumbles something, Lauri nods and Will stands up. 

“And stay out of trouble,” Mum reminds him, pointing a finger at Tom again.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, following Max as he walks over to the stone path that leads into their back garden. 

“I’m serious!”

Tom huffs, “I know! We won’t get in any trouble!”

☼

They do.

_It goes like this:_

The tryouts are always held in the huge sports field behind the school gym. Some people set up their chairs and blankets at the edge of the field, drinking and cheering as the tryouts go on. Will sits in the shade again, under a big oak tree with a few dozen others, reading that old latin book. He seems to be enjoying it, every once in a while his lips quirk up like he didn’t expect whatever happened in the book to happen but he probably already knew because he rereads every book like three times — not that Tom’s watching Will. He’s not. He’s focused on having a bit of fun at the tryouts with Max and, hey, maybe make it on the team. 

Tom and Max stand in line in the middle of the field with the other thirty team hopefuls to practice their kicking. Matty Kissinger is at the front, he takes a rugby ball from Mr. Reichelmann, the school P.E teacher and coach of the Rainford Ravens,walks a few feet away and faces the tall goal post. His kick is powerful and sends the ball up high. People clap and cheer. 

“ _Singes_ ,” Max scoffs behind him. _Monkeys._ “ _Ces gens sont faciles à divertir comme des singes.” These people are easy to entertain like monkeys._

Tom snickers, trying to hold in his laugh because this is a Serious Tryout. “Max, _tais-toi,_ ” he says. _Max, be quiet._

Max chuckles and shoves him, Tom stumbles forward and bumps into Roger Dixon in front of him. 

Tom starts, “oh, sorry—”

“Watch where you’re fucking going you little shit,” Roger shoves him back and he stumbles into Max. 

Oh, bloody hell, Roger Dixon is here? The boy’s a nutter. Crazier than Killy. He would not have come if he knew Dixon was here. 

“Don’t touch him,” Max glares at Roger, holding Tom’s arms to stop him from falling over. Tom scrambles to straighten himself. 

“ _Don’t touch him!_ ” Roger mocks Max’s accent, “what the hell are you gonna do about—”

Max pushes past Tom to punch Roger in the nose. Tom and the rest of the boys gasp. Roger reels back, covering his nose as he swears at Max. His nose is bleeding when he pulls his hands away. To Tom’s surprise, Roger’s mouth parts in an unnerving smile before he punches Max in the face.

“Max!” Tom shouts as he rushes to check on him. He cups Max’s face and grazes his thumb over the bruise forming on Max’s cheek. “Bloody hell, are you okay?”

“ _Je vais bien_ ,” he grunts out before pushing Tom behind him and turning to Roger. _I’m fine._ He spits blood onto the grass. Calmly, he says, “ _je vais le tuer_.” _I’m going to kill him._

_“N'ose-tu pas!’_ Tom hisses. _Don’t you dare!_

“You’re the little German aren’t you?” Roger says, stepping forward. “What are you bloody doing in England, _eh_? Why aren’t you back in that hellhole helping your fellow huns kill our lads—”

“I am _Austrian!_ ” Max snaps as he lands a hard punch on Roger’s jaw. Roger grunts and stumbles onto the grass. Max grits his teeth and leaps onto Roger, straddling his waist and pulling his fist back to land another punch. 

_It becomes worse like this:_

One of Roger’s friends, a chubby boy in the year above, tries to tackle Max off so Tom jumps onto his back to stop him. More of Roger’s friends and other boys jump into fight, crowding around them and it turns into a brawl within seconds. Tom fights off two boys at once, kicking and punching when he can and taking a searing, sharp pain in his knee when someone jumps on his leg. He screams, his vision blackens and the next thing he knows he’s waking in someone’s lap with a gentle voice calling his name. He gasps when he opens his eyes and sees Will hovering over him with a panicked look. He passes out again and when he wakes up he is being carried on someone’s back. 

“ _Huh_?” He mumbles, looking up at the clear sky and passing houses and trees. Will is the one carrying him on his back, Tom’s arms hang over Will’s shoulders. Max stomps on a few steps ahead of them, head down, his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. “Will?”

“Hi, Tom,” Will says, all gentle and warm as Tom shifts against his back. 

“Will, what…how long have you been carrying me?” He tries to wiggle free but that searing pain pierces through his leg again. “ _Ah!_ Ah, shit, what—”

“Tom, stop moving you’ll hurt yourself,” Will says. 

“What are you—” He gasps when he looks down at his leg and sees how swollen his foot is, the ankle is mottled with purple and dark purple bruising. “Oh, my God! What the hell happened to my foot?”

Max spins around then, walking backwards as he spreads his arms apart. His bottom lip is busted and bruises litter his face. He says, “one of Roger Dixon’s friends broke your ankle in the fight at tryouts, we got kicked out and we’re banned from ever going to tryouts again! Now we’re heading back to yours to have your mother and my cousin shout at us.” He turns back around and throws his arms up in the air, “ _es wird Spaß machen!_ ” 

Tom closes his eyes as the memory of the fight floods back to him. They got into a fight with Roger Dixon, or rather, Max did and to stop him from being beat up by another guy, Tom jumped in. He opens his mouth and winces at the sharp pain. He holds onto Will with one arm and touches his split lip with two fingers, frowning when it comes back with blood. 

“Great,” Tom mumbles, then tenses when Max’s words finally register. “Wait, we’re going back to my house?”

“Of course,” Will says as they walk up to the stone bridge. 

“What?” Tom stares at Will’s profile with wide eyes,“no, we can’t, Roger’s mates didn’t finish the job but Mum will, she’ll kill me!” 

They cross the stone bridge. Will shakes his head, the motion sends his wavy, light brown hair fluttering in Tom’s face and Tom is hit with the scent of tea tree and peppermint. It has Tom burying his nose in Will’s hair without thinking and it is as silky as he imagined. 

“…better if we go to your mum’s—” Will freezes, “what are you doing?”

Tom opens his eyes, not realising he had closed them. Will has paused half-way across the bridge and he’s glancing back at Tom with his eyebrows knitted together in confusion, Max is still walking away, muttering to himself in German. 

Tom pretends to pull something out of Will’s hair and throw it away. He sputters, feeling hot all over from being so close to Will, “um, there was a bug. It’s — it’s gone now.”

“Oh, right…thanks,” Will says and continues crossing the bridge, “as I was saying, it’s better if we go to your mum’s. She used to be a nurse, didn’t she? Before she married your dad.”

“Yeah but she’ll kill me!” Tom protests, “what about your nan? Can’t she sort my leg out?”

“No, she will only call your mum and tell her you broke your ankle,” Will says as they walk down a dirt path lined with tall, swaying grass and bright yellow buttercup bushes, “and I don’t think she will happy about my nan delivering her such news, do you?”

“No.” Tom groans and drops his forehead onto Will’s shoulder.

_It becomes even worse like this:_

Mum’s face is red and tight with anger as she lectures Tom on hooliganism and how he’s never going to be on that team if she has anything to do with it. He can hear Lauri giving Max the same lecture in French in the hallway. Tom’s dreams of replacing Joe as the star player on the Rainford Ravens are dashed within seconds. Will sits in Granddad’s armchair in the corner, awkwardly watching the whole ordeal.

“…and you’re bloody grounded!” Mum shouts at him as he lays on the sofa with his swollen foot propped up on a pillow and covered by a wet, cold cloth. “You’re not leaving this house for anything other than school for the next month!”

Tom refrains from mentioning that his broken ankle will makes it hard for him to go anywhere anyway. Contrary to popular belief, he does know when to keep his mouth shut.

Except Mum continues on her rant, “you better hope your ankle heals in time for your brother’s wedding or we’re finding another ring-bearer.” 

“What?” Tom sits up, “that’s not fair!”

“You’re right it isn’t,” Mum says, folding her arms over her chest, “maybe you should have thought of that before you went off fighting like a bloody hooligan!”

_It reaches catastrophic proportions like this:_

Will has knelt down next to him on the sofa to tend to the cuts and bruises on Tom’s face which means he is distressingly close to him right now and Tom is having a little trouble breathing. Will cups Tom’s jaw with his large, warm hand and with his other hand, he presses the clump of ice wrapped in a wet cloth against Tom’s bruised cheek. Tom can’t help but stare, his cheeks red, heart drumming hard, mouth parted as his gaze flickers across Will’s features. He swallows. Will is quite handsome, isn’t he? In an old-fashioned kind of way, like the noble princes in the fairy tales Mum used to read to him before bed.

“What’s wrong?” Will asks in that gentle voice Tom has come to favour more than anything. He takes his hand off Tom’s jaw and touches his own cheek. “Is there something on my face?”

“No— no, there isn’t,” Tom jolts slightly in his seat. He purses his lips and takes the ice wrapped cloth from Will’s hand and keeps it on his cheek. He looks over at his swollen foot. It’s still hurts butnot as badly as before thanks to the ice Mum had Max bring from the butcher’s. “I’m fine, just…thinking is all.”

“Wait,” Will says, taking a hold of Tom’s chin with his thumb and forefinger so Tom is looking at him again. Will’s too close, the scent of the tea tree and peppermint oil he uses to wash his hair mixes with his woodsy cologne (Tom spotted it on Will’s bedside table a while ago) to make Tom’s heart beat even faster. _Oh, God._ His whole face must be flaming red.

“What?” Tom says, trying to sound calm and definitely failing. 

“One second, you’ve got a bit of dirt on your…” Will licks his thumb, sweeps it across Tom’s other cheek and Tom’s breath hitches in his throat. Will offers him a quick smile before standing up and stretching his arms. He glances down at Tom , “are you okay?” He leans down and presses the back of his hand to Tom’s forehead, “you’re burning up—”

Will’s hand is pushed off his forehead by Max who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. 

“ _Hör auf ihn so sehr zu berühren,_ ” Max says with a sharp glare aimed at Will. 

Will stands back up, “what?”

“ _Anglais ou français, Max, tu te souviens?”_ Tom tells him. _English or french, Max, remember?_

“He’s fine, you don’t need to…” Max huffs and glances down at Tom. “You’re fine, aren’t you?”

“Apart from the bust lip and the painful, broken ankle…” Tom says, half-relieved and half-disappointed Will’s attention is no longer focused on him, “…I’m fine.” He grins, “fine and dandy!”

* * *

**July**

_Dear Joe,_

_Happy birthday! We’re all really excited to see you next month, especially Mum and Lauri! They have been running around like headless chickens trying to organise the wedding._ _I’m sorry, I meant to write this letter a few weeks ago so it would reach you in time for your birthday but it looks like you will get it late. How does it feel to be nineteen? You’ll be twenty next year. You’re an old man now, doing old man things like going to war and getting married. Mum’s baked a whole cherry pie and she’s shipped it down to you in France, you should have got it by now._

_I bet Mum’s already told you but I broke my ankle at the rugby tryouts in May. It wasn’t my fault. Roger Dixon’s a nutter. Max shoved me into Roger Dixon and Roger Dixon pushed me back and then Max punched him in the face for it. I tried to stop it but I ended up fighting off a bunch of Roger’s mates at once. Someone jumped on my leg and my broke ankle. Mum weren’t too pleased about it. Anyway, the doctor put my foot in a cast. I can’t take it off for a good two months because bones tell an eternity to heal apparently. I’ve had it on for a month and you wouldn’t believe how much this thing itches, Joe! I want to gnaw my own foot off sometimes._

_I’ve been grounded for the last month and a half. It was only supposed to be until the end of June but Mum caught me trying to sneak out to see Killy and Max and she added two more weeks. It’s not so bad. I’ve had Myrtle to keep me company and Will moved our French lessons to my bedroom. Max was also grounded by his mother when she found out he had started the fight at the tryouts. We’ve been writing each other letters to keep in contact as Will was kind enough to volunteer as our postman. I get why you chose him as your best man. There is no one better than William Schofield._

_Speaking of your best man, he’s officially finished school. They had a big assembly in mid-June (that I missed because of my ankle) to send off the final year pupils and some of the lads who have enlisted. I asked him what he plans to do now he’s free from Rainford Hill and he said he had no clue. Whatever he chooses to do he’ll be brilliant at it, don’t you think? After Granddad, he’s the cleverest chap I know._

_Best,  
Tom_

_P.S. Can you bring a souvenir from France? When Killy’s older brother came back for his leave in March he got Killy a miniature Eiffel Tower and he won’t stop bragging about it. It has to better than Killy’s. I want to wipe that smug smile off his face._

* * *

**August**

Myrtle barks at Tom as he grabs his clutches and pushes himself up off the sofa. It’s been ten minutes since Lauri went into the kitchen to make Tom some tea. He wonders what’s taking so long.

“I’m okay, M,” he says and leads down to pat her head. 

She’s been quite worried about him, sniffing at his leg and following him around ever since he broke his ankle. She barks again and trots after Tom as he limps into the hallway. He finds Mum weeping in the kitchen with Lauri hugging her and rubbing her back. Granddad sits by the small dining table and stares forlornly at the both of them as he fiddles with an envelope in his hand.

“What’s going on?” Tom asks as he hobbles further into the kitchen. 

Lauri glances at Granddad, “Henry, could you please…”

Granddad sighs and looks up at Tom. He frowns, “Joe isn’t coming back.”

Tom stiffens, “what?”

“Here,” Granddad says, standing up with a grunt and walking over to him to hand him the envelope.

Tom frowns as he opens the envelope and pulls out the letter, apprehension coiling like a snake in his stomach. 

_Dear Mum,_

_I’m afraid my letter to you will be short and disappointing as I’m required somewhere else immediately. My leave has been cancelled. I won’t be able to return home and I don’t know when I will be able to. I can’t say much about why, only that every man is needed at the moment, and they would redact my explanation or simply burn the letter if I did._

_Tell Tom, I’m sorry and that I miss him dearly.I will bring him a souvenir a hundred times better than anything Killy has on my return._

_Tell Granddad, I quite enjoyed the last book he sent me and I would like him to send another. It feels like he is with me when I read it._

_Tell Lauri, I love her and I’m trying my best to come back to her but it’s hard. It’s the hardest thing I have ever done._

_Tell Will, I miss him too and I cannot wait to go to the Round Table for a chat and lots of drinking._

_I love you all. I miss you all._

_Your favourite son,  
Joe_

_P.S. Thank you for the cherry pie you sent last month. It was delicious. I shared it with some of my men on my birthday and they said it was the best pie they had ever tasted. It boosted their morale right up!_

_“Oh_ ,” Tom says, glancing up at Granddad who has sat back down. “No wedding then?”

Lauri looks at him with tear-stained cheeks and a pursed mouth. She holds onto Mum as Mum cries into her shoulder. “There will be a wedding,” she says, “just later, whenever Joe returns.”

Tom glances back at the letter, reading over his brother’s regretful words. Seeing Joe again was the only thing he was looking forward to this year and now it’s not happening, Tom feels like he is lost at sea with no compass and a darkening storm threatening to collapse his ship and drown him. He shakes his head free of such morbid thoughts. 

“He’ll come back,” he tells them with a bright smile. “He’ll come back and we’ll throw the best wedding this village has ever seen.”

“ _Exactement_ ,” Lauri smiles too, although hers is shaky. _Exactly_. 

* * *

**October**

Tom turns the newspaper onto the next page — _yesterday, the Germans attempted to recapture much of the remaining lost ground by attacking with five regiments around Loos and against part of the 7th Division on the left flank. Foggy weather inhibited observation, the artillery preparation was inadequate and the British and French defenders were well prepared behind intact wire. The German attack was repulsed with 3,000 casualties but managed to disrupt British attack preparations —_ it’s yanked out of his hands and thrown onto the dining table.

“Oi,” Tom frowns, looking up, “I was reading that.”

Will walks around the long dining table to come and sit next to him. 

“You shouldn’t,” he says, “it will only make you worry more.”

Tom’s ankle has finally healed enough for him to take off the cast. It still aches sometimes and he has to keep using the clutches for another month but it’s a huge improvement from being stuck at home. He came around to Will’s house after school to see him because, well, he misses him, okay? School was already boring but it’s almost intolerable now Will has finished and Joe has gone off to war. It’s only _almost_ intolerable because of Max. God knows he would be skipping out on every lesson if it wasn’t for Max (or, admittedly, Killy).

“We all thought it would be over by Christmas but it’s been going on for a year now with no sign of it stopping,” Tom’s frown deepens, “I mean…maybe I should be worried. Joe said he couldn’t come back in August because they needed as many men as possible,” he points to the front page of the _Rainford Review_. In bold, capital letters the headline reads: _THE GREAT BATTLE OF LOOS._ Below that is a full page photograph of hundreds of soldiers walking in an orderly line through an abandoned French town. “This battle must have been the reason his leave got cancelled. They’re saying it’s the biggest British offensive so far on the Western Front.”

“Tom, the papers say a lot of things,” Will tells him and takes a sip of his tea, “their goal is to sell and nothing sells better than hysteria.”

“Well, they must be selling out with the war going on,” Tom says, reaching forward and wrapping his fingers around the steaming mug of hot chocolate Will made for him upon stepping into his house. “I just…I just want him to come home.” He bites his lip, “Clarence, Killy’s oldest brother got killed at Loos.”

Will looks at him, “he did?”

Tom nods, “yeah, Max told me they buried him near the frontline…” He can’t stop the question from spewing out, “do you think that’s what’ll happen to Joe if—if—”

“You mustn’t think like that,” Will says, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it, “it’s better not to think of it at all.”

He feels cold, from the frosty walk here or the thought of Joe never coming home at all he isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. Somewhere in Loos, his older brother is being bombarded with artillery, fighting for his life and every life in England. Tom sighs and drinks the hot chocolate but the cold remains.

* * *

**November**

On a rainy Saturday afternoon, Tom sits in the cosy reading room of Rainford Library waiting for Will so they can continue with their weekly French lessons but Will is uncharacteristically late today. He’s normally really early or bang on time for everything. Not to mention he has been working at the library full-time since finishing school so he should already be here. Tom hopes he’s okay. 

He momentarily pushes aside his concern for Will to glare up at Mrs. Hubert, the head of Rainford Library who stands over him, frowning with her hands propped on her hips. 

He straightens up in his seat on the sofa and offers her a bright smile everyone says is identical to Joe’s,“oh, hello, Mrs Hubert, how are you this fine afternoon?”

Her frown only deepens, her ancient, wrinkled face contorting into annoyance. Okay. So, something’s got her in a tizzy. It doesn’t take much. Tom’s presence in the library is enough for her mood to darken. He’s been pretty well behaved so he doesn’t get why she’s so—

“You owe ten shillings in late book fines,” she says. 

_“_ What?” He says, staring up at her with furrowed eyebrows. Is she mad? “I don’t have any late fines.”

Mrs. Hubert glares down at him. “Yes, you do.”

Any books he takes out he returns well before their due date because Mrs. Hubert watches him like a hawk. She has been waiting for him to slip up ever since that incident with Killy so she can ban him. He would rather eat his own trousers whole than give her the satisfaction. 

“No, I don’t,” he says because he bloody well doesn’t. 

“Yes, you do,” Mrs. Hubert huffs and takes out a small notebook from her woolly cardigan and opens it. She nudges her half-moon glasses down her hook noose to read it. “You are yet to return the following books; _Tartuffe, Madame Bovary_ and _Bel-Ami_.” She looks at him, “all are overdue by _six months,_ Tom!”

“ _Six months_?” Tom repeats in disbelief, pushing himself up to stand. There’s no bloody way he’s accepting this slander. “I returned all those books _before_ the due dates. Ask Harriet, she was the one who checked them in.”

Mrs. Hubert says, “Harriet’s away on holiday.”

Tom’s eyes narrow, “how convenient.”

Mrs. Hubert’s eyes narrow too. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m _saying_ I returned all those books and you’re _wrong.”_

_“_ You did _not_ and I am _right,_ ” she retorts.

“Y’know what?” Tom scoffs again, “fine, let’s go downstairs to the foreign bit for books and I’ll show you they’re there because I _did_ return ‘em.”

Mrs. Hubert turns her nose up, “yes, _let’s._ ” 

Tom frowns at her before he starts marching out of the reading room with Mrs. Hubert following closely behind. The woman is ridiculous. Her life is so boring she has to imagine things to be angry about. He hasn’t even been at the library for fifteen minutes and Mrs. Hubert is harassing him. He rushes down the winding staircase and heads to the aisle packed with foreign fiction to prove Mrs. Hubert wrong. _Oh_ , this is going to be so sweet. She has been looking for any reason to ban Tom for almost three years now and she thinks she finally has it.

“No, the next one,” Mrs. Hubert says when Tom almost turns into the History section. 

They walk down the International aisle, Tom eyes every book they pass, his fingers trailing along the spines until he comes to a halt. He bends down and pulls out the books. 

“A-ha,” he says, standing back up and turning to show them to her. “Here they are; _Tartuffe, Madame Bovary_ and _Bel-Ami.”_

“Give me that,” Mrs. Hubert frowns as she takes them off him. She opens each one to the first page to check the stamps confirming their return dates. Tom can tell the exact moment he’s won and proven her wrong by the way her mouth parts and closes.

“Well?” Tom leans an elbow against the shelf and rests his cheek in the palm of his hand.He grins, “I think ten shillings is an appropriate apology for accusing me of such nonsense.”

“You’re not getting ten shillings,” Mrs. Hubert snaps then pouts like a child when she’s well into her seventies, “I was….mistaken.” 

Tom’s grin widens. That must have pained her to say. He wonders if she will burst into flame at any second. She kneels down and shoves the books back onto the shelf. She looks up at Tom when she stands. It used to be that they were the same height but Tom went through a bit of a growth spurt in the summer and he’s taller than her. He’s taller than Mum and Granddad too. He almost reaches Will’s ear now but Will is a lanky guy and he just keeps growing taller and taller. Tom doubts he’ll ever catch up with him. 

She lets out a huff, spins on her heels and trots away in her clanky kitten heels. Tom chuckles. He’s about to walk off too when he hears a giggle coming from the next aisle. Curious, he walks to the opposite end of the aisle and peaks his head past the book shelf. His breath stutters in his throat. 

The early afternoon light floods in through the huge arched windows and falls on Will and Kara, one of Killy’s older sisters. 

Will is leant back against a shelf with an open book in hand and Kara smiling up at him as he reads it aloud in latin. “… _quo pius Aeneas, quo Tullus dives et Ancus, pulvis et umbra sumus._ ” 

For a moment, Tom is mesmerised by the mellow nature of Will’s voice and how, even though he can't understand a word, he can feel the deep melancholy pushing through. Kara seems just as mesmerised, her brown eyes swim with some yearning emotion Tom feels mirrored back within himself. 

“… _nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro vincula Pirithoo_ ,” Will says, then pauses and shuts the book. He glances down at Kara, “sorry, hope I didn’t bore you…”

Kara’s smile widens, “no, it’s a beautiful poem. I mean I had no idea what you said but it was beautiful. Thank you for reading it to me.”

“Oh, you’re…you’re quite welcome,” Will returns her smile faintly, “uh, last summer, Lauri and I went to a lecture in Cambridge and the professor confessed that he thought it to be the most beautiful poem in ancient literature, which—”

Kara grabs Will by the collars of his shirt and pulls him down for a kiss. Will lets out a small, surprised gasp as Kara spins around so her back is against the book shelf and Will is before her. He closes his eyes, his hand coming up to rest on the shelf by Kara’s shoulder and the other rests on her hip and —

Tom turns and runs out of the library, ignoring the dull ache in his ankle and the confused look Mrs. Hubert throws him on his way out. It’s still pouring rain outside and it rains all the way home. Tom ignores that too. He grits his teeth, some dark, hot emotion lances through him as he crosses the road.

If Will wants to go round kissing Kara Kilgour in the library when he’s supposed to be practicing French with Tom then he’s bloody welcome to do it. Tom isn’t going to wait around for him to finish kissing Kara. He has better things to do.

Before Joe left, Tom heard him mention to Lauri that Kara had taken a bit of a fancy to Will. Tom had dismissed it at the time because, well, Will hadn’t shown any interest in Kara, he hadn’t shown any interest in anyone actually and it was hard to imagine him doing so. He only had eyes for one thing and one thing only. Poetry. Kara must be pretty special to tear his attention away from poetry.

Tom hasn’t been able to do that — he freezes. Wait, wait, _what?_

The rain pours, soaking him through to the bone but he doesn’t move, standing still in the middle of street as the realisation hits him like a freight train.

“ _Tu te moques de moi?”_ he whispers, his heart becoming a wild thing in his chest at the mere thought of William Schofield. Its thundering beat in his ears drowns out the sound of the heavy rain, “are you kidding me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all of joe's letters are based off real letter soldiers sent home and lbr things have been quite soft so far but fair warning, its gonna be quite painful for everyone involved from now on. like they say, its always darkest before the dawn.
> 
> again, thank you for reading you amazing gems! 
> 
> p.s. the latin poem will reads to kara is by horace, from odes (book 4, poem 7). it really is said to be the most beautiful poem in ancient literature, do give it a read.


	4. 1916 - Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conscription drags tens of thousands men into a neverending war. A pleasant surprise lightens the dark mood.

* * *

☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ 

* * *

**1 9 1 6**

* * *

**February**

The gate creaks open. The snow crunches under his feet as he walks to the Blake household. This time of year the vines crawling all over their cottage walls are stripped bare from the cold. In the brighter months when the sun is no longer shy to spread its light everywhere, the vines bloom brilliant green and it makes their house look like something out of a fairy tale, a cottage in the magical woods where lost heroes come to find their way. He hopes to find his way today or rather, to feel less guilty about it.

Will knocks on the door, Myrtle’s muffled bark comes through on the other side before it opens to reveal a smiling Elsie Blake with flour dusting her curly blonde hair and a flowery apron. Myrtle sits at the bottom of the stairs, her tongue out and her tail wagging.

“Morning, love,” Elsie says. She tilts her head to the side, “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages, you don’t come ‘round as often.”

“No, I—I suppose not.” He says rather sheepishly as he rubs the back of his neck. “Work has been keeping me busy. Sorry.”

He has been working full time at the library since he left school and since Mrs. Baumer recommended him to Cambridge, he spends his weekends immersed in old literature that needs translating and sent back. He doesn’t have much, if any, time for leisure these days and the few hours of relaxation he does get, he goes on walks with Kara Kilgour or lectures at Oxford and Cambridge with Lauri.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do when he finished school last June. If he had still been at Eton, he would have continued his studies in Oxford like he often spoke about with George Parry, arguably his only companion at that school. He often wonders if Parry did manage to go to Oxford or if he has been dragged into the war, if he is on some muddy French field evading shells and bullets. 

There are no _ifs_ now, the government announced conscription only a few days ago. Parry, Will, all those boys in his class at Eton, and any boy of age must join the war.

Elsie waves her hand dismissively, “oh, there’s nothing to apologise for my love! You’re nineteen. I forget sometimes. You’re a man now.”

Nan says that too. He’s growing too quickly, so quickly she wonders where the years have gone. Somedays, she will look at him like she is comparing him to an old picture and she turns teary-eyed and squeezes his cheeks. Often she comments that Will looks just like Grandpa and a small part of him preens or even sighs in relief because she didn’t compare him to Father. 

“Come in, love,” Elsie says, stepping aside, “you’re bringing the cold in and to be honest, the last thing I need is you catching pneumonia and your nan biting my head off for it.”

She shuts the door as Will steps in. She gestures for him to take his coat off and throw it on the hangar but he shakes his head. 

“I cannot stay long I’m afraid,” he says, glancing around the landing, “Mrs. Baumer wants me to go over her finished translation of _Poetics._ I don’t want to keep her waiting. I just came over to drop something off.” He doesn’t add that he also wants to tell Tom he has to enlist.  Will opens up his leather satchel and rummages through all the books stuffed inside and checks the gift he brought is in there. It is. He looks over at Elsie, “Is Tom in?”

Elsie pats the flour off her apron. Myrtle rushes over to them and starts licking the flour off the wooden floor. 

“Myrtle,” Elsie says with a light chuckle then shakes her head and glances up at Will, “yeah, he’s in the kitchen. We’re making scones to hand out after mass tomorrow.”

When mass finishes at St. Christopher’s, Father Fairchild invites everyone to the small hall built into the church for tea, baked treats and conversation. A few months ago, Tom started bringing his homemade baked goods for people to eat after mass and attendance at the post-mass chat has doubled because of him. He has half the village enamoured with his bakery.

“Why don’t you wait in the living room and I’ll grab him for you,” Elsie says, “Henry’s in there, have a little catchup with him, he hasn’t seen you in a while either.”

Will nods and walks into the living room where Tom’s grandfather, an overweight and grey-haired elderly man, sits in the plush armchair by the wide window that looks out onto the back garden. Will is a little relieved to see he’s fallen asleep. Henry would want to talk about the war and probably how glad he is that the government is finally taking this war seriously enough to make it mandatory for men to fight. Will doesn’t want get into an another argument about how immoral and undemocratic it is to force people into war. Henry snores lightly in the chair, his huge glasses perched on his forehead with his mouth ajar and the open newspaper lays forgotten in his lap. Will walks a little closer to check what he was reading. He frowns. Of course it is about the war.

_THE GREATEST BATTLE OF WAR IS RAGING, WITH VERDUN AT THE CENTRE OF ACTIVITY._

_More than 400 guns are amassed behind the German Front. The cannonade is termed the sublimest spectacle of destruction and thunder since the world began; half a million men in attack force; whole battalions annihilated by French curtain of fire; Germans take several outer positions but the French are confident attack will fail; Russians again rout Turks._

The subheading only confirms the reason why Will tries to avoid the papers and their anxiety-inducing talk of the war. He has particularly avoided the papers since conscription was announced.He doesn’t need to hear more horror stories when he will be experiencing it himself soon. He prays Joe is miles away from the carnage at Verdun. It is a battle between the French and the Germans, thankfully, the British are not involved with this one. He prays they won’t be. Joe wrote to him only a few days ago, excitedly informing Will of his promotion to Second Lieutenant and there was no mention of Verdun. 

Will cranes his head and continues reading the paper, he’s now morbidly curious about this battles outcome. It has been almost a week and it still rages on. How many men have died in those first crucial days? Will he be one of those men when he is dragged onto the front line?

_Paris, Feb. 25 : With the French lines battered by day and by night by the masses of the enemy hurled against them, the Germans have now begun a shattering bombardment of the outer defensive works of Verdun —_

“Bleed France white,” a deep voice says. 

Will startles and turns to the open door of the living room. Tom stands in the doorway with Myrtle by his feet, still wagging her tail and looking between the two boys. It has been almost a year since Tom’s voice broke from the soft pitch of childhood to a deep, rich pitch of adulthood and Will still isn’t used to it. He’s not used to how tall Tom has gotten either. One day Will was teasing him by holding a book too high for Tom and smiling as Tom struggled to jump and take it and the next day, Tom could reach the book and shove Will back for being annoying. He hasn’t reached Will’s height and he likes to tease Will back by calling him a beanpole.

Once, Tom called Will a beanpole in front of Killy and Killy had smirked and said, “I bet you wouldn’t mind climbing that beanpole would you, Tom?” 

Will had frowned in confusion and Tom’s face had turned tomato red as he slammed a hand over Killy’s mouth and repeatedly told him to shut up. Will had chalked it up to Killy being his usual strange self because, well, nothing Killy said or did made sense.

Looking at Tom then, Will understands his grandmother’s wistful sentiments about growing up too quickly. Where has the time gone? Sometimes, it feels like only days ago he arrived in Rainford and met a friendly seventeen-year-old Joseph Blake and a small yet mouthy Thomas Blake. Now, the elder brother is almost twenty and knee-deep in muddy trenches and the younger brother is sixteen and becoming a baking connoisseur. 

Tom stands in the doorway with his hands stuffed in the front pocket of his flowery apron and some speckles of flour in his mop of curly, dark hair. 

Will says, “pardon?”

“Apparently that’s what General Falkenhyan wants,” Tom says, “to bleed France white.” He leans a shoulder against the door frame, “I was reading up about it. The Germans think they can overwhelm the French with a long, hard battle ‘cos Verdun is really important to them, it’s a historic city or something.”

“But,” Will frowns, “if their plan is to tire the French out with a long battle it means they will have to hold out longer than them.”

Tom blinks, then laughs, “oh, yeah, I didn’t even think of that. Actually, it’s quite a stupid plan.”

He didn’t realise it until now but he misses Tom. He has been busy with the library and translations for the last couple of months he hasn’t seen much of his dear friend. It’s not that he hasn’t tried to see him, he has but each time Tom hasn’t been home or he has to run off to do an errand with Max. 

“Indeed,” Will says, then smiles.

Tom’s laughter dies, a dazed look passing over his face as he looks at Will. For a moment too long, silence sits tensely between them. The few times he has managed to talk to Tom in the last couple of months it has felt…tense. Something has shifted in their friendship, something profound and it threatens to drive Will mad trying to pinpoint it. Myrtle barks and Tom jolts, pushing himself off the door frame and folding his arms over his stomach. 

Tom clears his throat, “so, um, Mum said you wanted to drop something off for me?”

“Right, yes,” Will says, remembering why he had come over in the first place. 

He places his satchel on the coffee table and rummages through it again until he pulls out a heavy, hardcover book. He walks over to Tom and gives it to him.

“What’s this?” Tom asks as he flips the book between his hands. He glances at the cover, “ _Recettes Pour Le Maître Pâtissier._ ” He glances up at Will, “you got me a French pastry book?” 

Will nods, “Lauri and I went to Cambridge for a lecture on biblical literature and they had a book fair on. I saw this French recipe book and—” he shrugs, “I thought you might like it, it’ll help with your French.”

They haven’t had their usual French lessons in almost two months and it’s not because Will is too busy, he is but he would craft the time by any means necessary for Tom. Tom’s French is almost perfect, _almost_ he just needs more practice. He planned to give Tom his own makeshift French listening and writing exam back in November after a few more lessons but then Tom never turned up to their lesson in the library. Will had sought him out after his shift had ended but Elsie told him Tom had gone to Max’s and when Will had gone to Max’s, Max had said Tom didn’t fancy practicing any French at the moment. 

Tom flicks through the book, taking in all the different recipes, his blue eyes seem to shine with the possibility of it all. He glances back up at Will, “I do like it, thank you.”

Will smiles and Tom gets that dazed look again. Will steps forward, Tom steps back. Will frowns. 

He doesn’t get it. What has changed between them? Some change is good, some change is bad. He’s not sure what kind of change is this and if they can ever return to the way they were before. 

Will’s mouth opens and closes as he tries to think of the best way to approach this. 

“Forgive me,” he says, making sure to meet Tom’s bright blue gaze. 

Tom stares at him,“for what?”

“I feel as if I have wronged you in some way,” he says, “and if I have, I apologise. Could you tell me what I did?”

The only thing he can think of that could have annoyed Tom is that he was late to the weekly French lesson back in November but Tom hadn’t turned up either, that cannot be it.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Tom says, wrapping his arms around the large book and clutching it against his chest. He glances away, pouting slightly when he continues, “you haven’t wronged me in any way. I don’t think you ever could.” He licks his lips and glances back at him, “Will, I…” 

Will watches him and waits. Tom remains quiet for too long, staring at Will with those big blue eyes like he’s lost at sea and Will might be his compass. It is an arresting sight and Will finds himself frozen to the spot, unsure what to do or say in that moment but stare back at Tom. 

Somehow, he manages to croak, “Tom?”

Tom blinks, then lets out a laugh that sounds too forced to be genuine. He holds onto the book with one arm and tugs a hand through his hair, spreading flour into the air. 

“Sorry,” Tom says, “sorry, it’s—” he shakes his head, “you’ve done nothing wrong Will.”

“I haven’t?”

“You haven’t.”

“Then, why does it feel like you have been avoiding me?”

The question seems to take Tom by surprise. He blinks up at Will for a few seconds. Finally, he says, “I haven’t — I haven’t been avoiding you. It’s just — you’re busy, aren’t you? At the library, with the translations, with…” he glances away again and mumbles something too quiet for Will to hear.

“What?” 

Tom sighs as he looks up at Will. “I haven’t been avoiding you, okay? You have work and I have school and with Joe gone, I’m helping Mum run the cherry farm now and once I finish my driving lessons with Granddad I’m going to start doing deliveries to London soon. We’re both busy.” 

Will draws in a breath and readies himself. He takes a step forward, “Tom, I have to tell you something—”

“Later, yeah?” Tom takes a few steps back into the landing. “Look, I have to go check on the scones,” he waves the book in the air, “thanks for this, really. _C_ _’est vraiment gentil de votre part._ ” _It’s really kind of you._

Frustration rises within him at Tom’s flippancy because if he doesn’t say this now, he never will. He turns to leave and Will uses his firmest voice to say, “Tom. I’m enlisting.”

He has been holding that in for the last week, unsure of how to let it spill out and now that it is finally out it feels worse. He thought he would feel better once he freed himself of the guilt of keeping his enlistment from Tom but it doesn’t. Why does it feel worse? 

Tom freezes in the doorway, he has his back to him but Will can sense the tension rolling from him in waves. Will’s heart speeds up as Tom slowly turns back to face him, his expression is one of confusion and ever rising turmoil.

“You what?” Tom says. 

Will forces himself to repeat it. “I’m enlisting. I’m going to war, Tom.”

Tom blinks as if Will speaking Sumerian. “What — what are you talking about?” He marches into the living room, the confusion giving way to anger that twists his mouth into a fine line. “How can you be enlisting?” 

Will steps back, surprised by Tom’s growing fury. He has seen Tom furious plenty of times, at Max for cheating at football, at Killy for dragging him into trouble, at his mother for banning him from joining the rugby team but in all the years they have known each other that fury has never once been directed at Will. He scrambles for all the ways he can return in Tom’s good graces.

Will turns to his satchel and pulls out the leaflet he took from the library. “It’s conscription,” Will says, turning to face Tom. He passes the leaflet to him. “All eligible men from the ages of eighteen to thirty-four have to enlist.”

Tom takes the leaflet, his mouth falling open as he reads it. “This — this can't be right,” he says, “they can't do this. They can't just — just force people to fight and die! They can't do this.”

“Well, they have,” Will says.

“But how many more men do they bloody need? They have already taken half the men in this village,” Tom continues on, “I don’t understand. This was supposed to be over by Christmas…wait,” his eyes seem to light up then, some flicker of pointless hope, “it says you have until March second to appeal.”

“I’m not appealing,” Will says.

Tom’s head snaps up to look at him. His gaze is sharp, “you what?”

“It’s pointless,” he replies, telling him the same thing he told Nan when she brought it up, “Appeals are for farmhands and factory workers, working at the library is hardly essential work.”

“You don’t know if you don’t try, Will.”

“I don’t care for knowing,” he says, “I want to get this over and done with.”

Tom grits his teeth, “war isn’t something you can just _get over and done with.”_ He steps closer to him, _“_ you have to appeal, Will, you need to stay in Rainford.”

“Why?” He says, a little surprised by Tom’s sudden vehemence. He thought he would dismiss this as he has been dismissing Will for the last couple months.

Tom sputters, “because — because you just do, okay? What about our lessons? I still need to learn French.”

“You seem to be doing fine without them,” he says, “and I’m sure Lauri will teach you if you ask her—”

“I don’t want Lauri,” Tom snaps, staring up at Will with those big blue eyes, “I want you — to stay. I want you to stay.”

He thought this would be a quick, painless conversation. Tom would nod, wish Will good luck and make some excuse to go. If anything, it’s becoming more painful with each second that passes.

“Tom,” Will sighs. “I cannot stay.”

A thousand emotions flash across Tom’s eyes before he glares daggers at Will. 

“Fine!” Tom snaps. He scrunches up the leaflet and throws it at the wall, “if you’re so hellbent on dying in some bloody field there’s nothing I can do to stop you!”

“Tom—”

He turns and storms out and Will is left standing in the living room with Myrtle staring up at him. 

“Aren’t you going to follow him?” Will asks, a little surprised she hasn’t left either. 

Myrtle trots over to him and rubs the side of her head against his leg. Will sighs once more. He is being comforted by a dog. He didn’t realise he looked that sad.

“Thanks, M,” he says when she looks up at him. 

She makes a low mewling sound and goes back to rubbing his leg with her head. Will glances at his wristwatch. He ought to leave. Mrs. Baumer expects him in fifteen minutes. Will bends down to pat Myrtle’s head before he grabs his leather satchel off the coffee table and walks out into the hallway. 

He has just grabbed the door knob when Elsie says his name. He turns to find Elsie standing at the bottom of the stairs, one hand holding onto the wooden railing. 

“Will, darling,” she says, letting go of the banister to walk over to him. She drops her voice down to a whisper, “I’m sorry about Tom. He didn’t mean it, you’re one of his dearest friends, he cares a lot about you and he doesn’t want to see you hurt.”

Will looks down the hallway to make sure Tom isn’t in sight. He whispers back, “I know, I know, I’ll talk to him when he’s calmed down.”

“It’s just—” she lets out a short huff, “Joe has been gone for so long now, Tom can't stand the idea of anyone else leaving.” She pauses, “none more than you.”

Will glances at the ajar door of the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Tom’s back is turned to him, pots and pans are clanging as he scrubs them clean in the sink. He looks back at Elsie. She watches him for a moment, something like melancholy in her eyes before she steps forward and pulls him in for a hug. Will hesitates before he returns her hug. 

☾

“Is this your first time?” 

Will clears his throat, trying his best to hide his nerves, “yes.”

Kara offers him a soft smile and Will has the urge to reach across the table and place his hand over hers but, of course, he doesn’t. He has a sense of propriety after all, although his nan thinks otherwise due to his close friendship with the Blakes. Then again, Nan has a lot of opinions about a lot of things.

A few of Nan’s friends from church and the knitting club she runs in the town hall are sat a few tables away, they keep throwing curious glances at Will and Kara. Will bets every second of this encounter will relayed back to Nan and the last thing he needs is a lecture from her about proper public etiquette. Hand holding in public does not qualify as proper public etiquette.

Will glances down at the menu, unsure of what he wants and more unsure of how this conversation will go. She was the one who suggested they meet in the _Green Brew_ for a spot of afternoon tea. In the three years he has lived in Rainford, he has never stepped foot in the cafe despite the fact it is directly opposite the library. He has always walked past and glanced in at the dozen or people milling about, drinking their tea and nattering on as if the cafe was the perfect stage for idle conversation. He supposes it is but the conversation he plans on having is far from idle. 

Perhaps it is the selection of creamy cakes and tea that allows for any type of conversation to become idle.

The chamomile tea looks good. Chamomile tea is said to be calming. He could use that right now. 

The waitress leaves the trio of Nan’s friends to walk over to their table. Kara says she always chooses this spot because it allows for people-watching and she can admire the painting of Rainford hanging on the wall above Will’s head, while she admires the painting Will admires her in turn. She looks lovely this afternoon, her red hair appears like fire in the golden light that floods in from the huge bay windows to their right. 

The waitress is Blanche Leslie, the Mayor’s youngest and only daughter. She was part of Joe’s raucous group of friends back in school and now she helps her uncle run _Green Brew_. She is also Kara’s closest friend and that’s probably another reason Kara spends so much time in the cafe. 

“Kara, Will,” Blanche says when she reaches their table, her smile is bright as her gaze skips between the two. She rocks back and forth on her feet, “ready to order?”

Kara returns Blanche’s smile and says, “ _yes,_ can we get the miniature afternoon tea please.” She glances at Will, “what would you like?”

“Chamomile tea, please,” Will says. 

Blanche nods, “perfect, it should about five minutes.”

She takes their menus, turns and disappears behind the counter and into the kitchen to relay their order. 

Kara taps her fingers on the table, she bites her lower lip before she says, “listen, Will, I — I think I know what you wanted to talk about.”

Will straightens up in his seat, feeling alert all of a sudden. This — thing between him and Kara is still fairly new. Ever since she kissed him in the library back in November they have worked around each other’s schedules to meet at least once a fortnight for a walk through the woods and endless green fields surrounding Rainford or day trips to London. 

“You do?” He says. 

Kara stopped by the library two days ago to say hello to him. He had been returning books to their respective shelves when she approached him with an air of nervousness about her. He hadn’t seen her in almost three weeks as she had been down in Brighton visiting family and he thought it was prudent to finally tell her about the new law if she didn’t already know herself. She probably did.

Kara nods as she clasps her hands together in front of her on the table. “My sister told me about it when I returned,” she says, a forlorn look passing over her face, “you’re enlisting, aren’t you?’

“Yes,” he says, “I haven’t officially done so yet but it doesn’t matter, the government automatically enlists all eligible men next week.”

When Nan found out the government had announced conscription, she cursed every man that had a hand in it and she went on a rant about the undemocratic immorality of it all.She wanted to send a letter of appeal but Will stopped her. His job at the library and his translations were not more important than the war. Duty has called and it would be heinous thing to decline it despite all he has acquired in Rainford. Grandpa went off to war without a fuss when the time came and Father often remarked he would have done the same should the country require it of him. The war must be dire straits for the government to enforce enlistment like this. 

“I went for the tests yesterday,” Will says, recalling how Nan had accompanied him to the Warley Barracks in Brentwood. 

There had been hundreds of men in line, all awaiting to see if they were fit enough to join the army.Most of them were. The checks had gone well and the officer that had completed his tests told him he was in perfect condition to fight. After, Will had been taken to a dusty office where he placed his hand on a bible to swear allegiance to the King and promise to do his duty. It had felt like a lie. 

She asks, “are you joining the Essex Regiment? Most of the boys from the village do, Clarence is —was…was in the Essex Regiment.” 

Her voice catches at the amendment and that forlorn look seems to overtake her delicate features. Will damns propriety and reaches across to cover her clasped hands with his own. He ignores the wave of teetering coming from Nan’s friends’ tables. 

The Kilgours are a large family, three boys and three girls with Clarence as the oldest and Killy as the maddest. Last December the village came together one snowy, frigid morning to remember Clarence Kilgour and two other boys from Rainford who had fallen in the Battle of Loos. 

Kara blinks back the tears welling up as she shakes her head. She sniffs, “sorry, sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Will says.

She unclasps her hands and intertwines their fingers together. “Where are you being assigned?” 

“The East Surrey Regiment,” he says, “the eighth to be precise. I’ll be training in Kingston-upon-Thames for a couple of months.”

“You’re joining the Eighth?” A bright voice says.

Will and Kara look up to find Blanche standing by their table holding a tiered tray packed with finger sandwiches and scones. Will lets go of Kara’s hands and awkwardly settles his own in his lap. 

“Pardon me, I don’t mean to be nosy.” She says as she places the trayin the middle of the table. "My brother's in the Eighth.”

“No matter. Which one? Milton?” Kara asks as Blanche has two older brothers both of whom enlisted in the war the day it was declared a few years ago.

Nan says Mayor Leslie made sure they were the first to enlist as he couldn’t have his sons appear to be cowards. 

Blanche lays down the folded napkins and cutlery before each of them. “No, Milton’s in the Essex Regiment. I’m talking about Ellis,” she says, “he’s a lieutenant in the eighth,” a corner of her lips quirk up, “he hates every second of it — he’s always complaining about how annoying some of his men are and that none of them even know what day of the week it is.” She glances at Will, “sorry, it looks like he might be one of your senior officers.”

Will never spoke to either of Mayor Leslie’s sons but he did see Ellis Leslie swearing at the squirrels in Jade Park when they tried to steal the bread he had brought for the ducks. This was about a month into his arrival in Rainford and at the time, Will remembers thinking he was a peculiar man. 

“Don’t frighten him, Blanche,” Kara says, casting her an admonishing look.

“I’m not,” Blanche insists. She looks at him, “Will, are you frightened by my grumpy brother?”

“No, I don’t know him—”

“See?” Blanche turns to Kara who just shakes her head. She smiles, “right, enjoy your food and let me know if you need anything else.”

Will and Kara thank her in unison. She nods and goes over to check on Nan’s friends.

“Listen, Kara,” Will begins, forcing himself to say it, “I have thoroughly appreciated our time together and if things were different I would have liked to continue seeing you but—” he swallows, the nerves wreaking havoc with his train of thought, “I’m going to war and I don’t wish to have you tied to someone who might not…return.” 

He doesn’t add, _it would be cruel for both of us._

She stares at him, that forlorn look is back. Her answering smile is sad, “I know, I thought you might say that. I suppose it’s better this way, maybe in another time, another life…”

He lets out a breath. “Maybe.”

She picks up a scone from the tray and places it on a saucer. “I wanted to tell you something too, “ she says, “I’m leaving Rainford next month.”

“You are?”

“I’m joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse,” she says, dropping a few sugar cubes into her tea, “I’ll be tending the wounded soldiers who arrive in England, and eventually, I’ll be taken to France to help the men in the Front.” She stares into the cup as she stirs the tea, “Clarence was stabbed in the stomach. He would have survived if they were enough orderlies or nurses but they weren’t and he bled out on the grass by the medical tents.” 

“Kara…” he flounders to find the words but he cannot. To know someone you loved died alone and in tremendous pain is hell.

“I don’t want that happening to anyone else,” she looks at him then, the sadness is gone, replaced with steel-like determination, “and I can’t stand to be in Rainford any longer when the world is eating itself.”

* * *

**March**

Something about all of this feels — inevitable. It feels as if it had been put in motions years, even decades ago, slowly gaining momentum with each day that passed and it has reached him. He is the next person to be swept up in the great runaway train this war has become, whether or not he survives is something only the Lord knows.

“When are you leaving?” Nan asks.

Will stares at the letter. The confirmation of his enlistment is a bitter but familiar pill to swallow. It washes down much easier than expected. War was always meant for him and there is nothing any one could have done to stop that. 

Will looks up from the letter, Nan sits in the armchair with a steaming cup of tea in hand and a thick shawl wrapped around her.

“April 6th,” he tells her. 

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, she seems to have retreated into her mind. Will can almost see the thoughts churning inside her before she says, “three weeks.”

She looks — frail in the late afternoon light and his heart aches as she will be alone in this house once more when he departs. Nan is taking his deployment much better than he had expected. She gives him a sad smile and asks him to take the day off work tomorrow and come with her to afternoon mass that Wednesday. 

It is quiet inside the church, filled with bars of sunlight that spill in from the arched stained glass windows around them. Will watches the specks of dust dancing in the sunlight, fascinated by the motionless, as if they are frozen in time. It makes him think — wouldn’t it be nice if they were a button one could simply press to pause the world. Pause and breathe in the beauty, the futility and the wonder of it all. He used to do that at Eton. Will would go to the far corner of the college, sit by the gnarly oak tree and watch the boys engage in a game of kickabout or note the various birds that swept between the branches and into the sky. Sometimes Parry would join him with a snack his mother sent him and they would debate the various causes of the 1848 Revolutions. 

Parry. He must have been sent to the Front. There is no question about it. 

They are less than half a dozen people in mass that Wednesday, which is the normal turnout for a midweek mass. 

Nan fiddles with the corner of the bible as she looks at Will. “I know you would rather enlist with no fuss, you have never been much of a troublemaker unlike those Blake boys you insist associating yourself with—”

“Nan,” he says in an admonishing tone. He has no desire to hear her critique on the Blake family for the umpteenth time. 

She purses her lips then says, “I only mean…” she takes his hand and squeezes it, “you’re all I have left.” 

Will tries his best not to squirm. Father was never big on emotions. He seemed to get this faint look of disgust whenever Will expressed anything that was more than ambivalence and that look would cut him raw and red. Once he overheard the servants commenting that Father had been colourful, bright and happy when Mother was alive and when she died Father had died with her. The man Will knew was a ghost. Any exposure of emotion rises within him that panic and Father’s disgust. He has been trying to push past it since Nan told him he was free to be and do as he liked. It’s hard. Unlearning dark habits is hard but living as he used to, alone and morbid in Eton did him no good.

Nan frowns in disgust, “it makes no sense. A Serbian kills an Austro-Hungarian duke and our English boys are sent to France to fight Germany? Bloody nonsense.” She looks over at the large wooden cross nailed above the alter, then she looks back at him, “Will, pumpkin, you must take care of yourself in France, you must return safe and well and—” she smiles, although it feels sad, “preferably _whole._ War has a horrible habit of tearing men apart, inside and out. It did that to your grandfather, it did the very same to Henry Blake no matter what he says. I wanted to send the appeal because I fear it will do the same to you. I…I fear if you do return, you will return as someone else. So, my darling, all I ask is that you return _whole_ , as you are now or nothing less.”

In her eyes, the same shade of dark blue as his own, he sees the days and months she spent worrying over Grandpa as he battled in Crimea. The worry and uncertainty of his survival tore at her and it changed her too. It almost broke her when he returned with one leg and an empty gaze. It’s cruel to do that to her again. Nan has to believe he will be okay and he will return to her. 

“You are all I have left in the world,” she adds with a whisper.

He thinks of Tom, growing up and seeking his own path. He is still angry about Will’s enlistment and refuses to speak to him. He thinks of Joe, hundreds of miles away in some French fields and closer to death than any of them. He thinks of Lauri, ready to move on from translations and start teaching at Rainford Hill. He thinks of Kara, her warm kisses and her plans to save as many wounded soldiers as possible. Perhaps, it’s time he moved on too. Perhaps, like Eton, Rainford was a mere pause and he is meant to move on to other things and other places too. 

Nan is all he has left in the world. Will pushes all the certainty and optimism within him into his voice then, “everything will be okay, Nan. Nothing has changed.”

Her gaze scans his face as she sighs and says, “oh, pumpkin, everything has changed.”

* * *

**April**

Will has been working at Rainford Library for seven months. There are many things he likes about working here. It’s peaceful and quiet and he gets to spend his days surrounded by literature. Some days he spends his lunch hour sat against a bookshelf with a half-eaten apple and a copy of Homer’s fantastical works. Some days he comes home late, when the sun has disappeared and the stars are blinking bright after pouring over Sappho and Sophocles in the reading room with Lauri. 

Perhaps, his most favoured aspect of the job is reading terrific tales to the children of St. Christopher’s Primary School twice a week. The children are no older than ten, eager and bright-eyed as Will tells them of magical wardrobes that lead to spectacular worlds to Indian jungles packed with ferocious animals. When he tells them he is leaving to help in the war, many of them are confused as they don’t understand and to his surprise a few of them cry and crowd around Will to hug him. He embraces them, warmed by their affection and bids goodbye to their teacher who wishes him luck.

After the reading session, Will packs the books away for (probably) the last time, feeling a deep sense of melancholy at the turn this year has taken. He shouldn’t be surprised, this happened at Eton. He had finally grown accustomed to the school, to spending afternoons in the library or sitting in the field with Parry but then his teacher had pulled him out of class to quietly let him know of his father’s death. 

When he was sixteen, he arrived in Rainford on a windy morning and if the weather keeps up like this, it seems he will be leaving on a windy morning too. Will packs away the books as he mulls over the remaining days he has left in Rainford. 

He’s crouched down on the floor, rearranging the books on the lower shelves when heavy footsteps come up behind him. 

“Excuse me, mate,” the deep voice says when they have reached Will, “do you know where I can find the newspapers?”

“Of course,” Will pauses and stands up, “it’s three aisles down on the left, I can show—”

The book slips from his hand and lands on the floor.

“Joe?” He manages to croak out because — because _he's here._

It’s Joseph Blake standing before him, dressed in the khaki uniform of the British Army. He carries a hefty rucksack with a muddied, metal helmet hanging off it but the most surprising is the large rifle slung on his left shoulder. Joe holds onto the strap with one hand and with other he holds onto his cap. If he was passing Will on the street, Will wouldn’t recognise him but this close it couldn’t be anyone but Joseph Blake. His curly, dark hair has been cut short, and he has faint stubble that makes him look years older and Will marvels at the sight of him. 

It is Joe’s eyes that take Will back more than anything. They are still the same, bright shade of blue as Tom’s. It reminds him of the warm summers they spend exploring the forest or running through Danecroft but there is something different about him, a fleck of darkness that swims distantly in his gaze. 

Joe smirks as he shifts the strap of his rifle onto his shoulder. “Would you like me to sit for an oil painting? You’re staring an awful lot, mate,” he says, “I’m not a ghost.”

His teasing startles Will out of his stupor and they both move at the same time, meeting in a crushing hug that stretches out for a while. When they separate, they are both grinning at each other and Will grinning so hard his cheeks are starting to ache but he doesn’t care. _Joe is here._ After almost _two years_ at war and only corresponding via letters and the odd photograph, Joe has returned home and for the first time in months, perhaps since Joe left, the world feels right. 

“I—I don’t…” Will stammers, still struggling to believe Joe has returned.

Joe grins as he mocks Will, “I — I don’t…you don’t what, mate? Cat got your tongue?”

Will laughs and shoves him back. Joe hits the book shelf and soon they are both laughing, delirious from the sudden turn of events. 

“I’m guessing you just came back?” Will says, taking in Joe’s uniform once more. 

It looks relatively clean but they are streaks of dirt here and there and his boots are caked in mud as if he only left the depth of the trenches a few hours ago.

Joe nods, “yeah, my leave was only granted last week, I didn’t have time to write to everyone and tell them. My train arrived about five minutes ago and I was walking by the library and I thought let me check if Will is here and _voila, you are._ Do you live here now, mate?”

Will smiles, “shut up, I work here. How long is your leave?”

“I had my commanding officer put in a good word for me because he knows I haven’t been home in two years and I’m an exemplary officer if I do say so myself so they granted me a week.” Joe says, “but it took me two days to get here, bloody nightmare I’m telling you. I leave on Sunday.” A pause. The smile fades, “when do you leave?”

Will’s heart stumbles in chest. He knows, of course he knows. “I leave for London on the 6th.”

Joe’s eyebrows rise. “But — that’s only two days away.”

“I know,” Will sighs. They watch each other for a long moment. The despair of the situation sitting between them. Will says,“but today is my last day at the library, I’ll be free for the next two days. We can do whatever you like.” 

The smile slowly returns to Joe’s handsome face, “oh yeah? How about you come to the pub tonight for drinks like old times?”

Will smiles too, “of course.”

“And,” Joe places a hand on Will’s shoulder, “how about you come to my wedding tomorrow as my best man?”

“Tomorrow?”

Joe nods, his smile growing into that wide grin that makes him indistinguishable from Tom. He says, “yeah, I don’t have much time and I want to marry Lauri as soon as possible. I was heading to the church to ask Father Fairchild to do an impromptu wedding tomorrow before I came in here. I’m sure he’ll say yes. I can be very convincing.”

Will opens and closes his mouth, finally, he says, “yes, of course, I’ll be there.”

“Brilliant!” Joe squeezes his shoulder and lets go, stepping back to continue grinning at Will. He has to look up slightly as Will has grown to over six foot since they last saw each other. Joe laughs, “bloody hell, you’ve turned into a lanky bastard haven’t you?”

“And you’ve turned into a bear,” Will says, gesturing at Joe’s stubble. Try as he might, he hasn’t been able to grow one yet, the most he has achieved is a pathetic moustache which he shaved off the moment Tom burst out laughing when he saw it. Nan says he’s a late bloomer like Father, he couldn’t grow a proper beard until he was at least twenty-one. 

Joe laughs once more as he places his cap back on and strokes his stubble with his other hand. “Listen, I have to go talk to Father Fairchild then I need to go home and give Mum, Granddad and Tom a heart attack when they see me and Lauri the same heart attack too,” he says as he walks backwards down the aisle. He points at Will, “I’ll see you tonight, six o’clock at the Round Table!”

☾

_The Round Table_ is as loud and raucous as he remembers. He hasn’t been back since Joe left for the war. It didn’t feel right to do so, without Joe he would always feel misplaced in the pub packed with rowdy men and the stench of alcohol and cigarettes.When Will steps out into the beer garden to find Joe by a large table in the corner, amber-coloured pint in hand and that bright grin as he regales life on the front with Lauri and Blanche (some) of his old school friends it feels like he travelled back in time and all is well again. But it isn’t, of course it isn’t. Not all their school friends are here. Most of them have lost their lives in the war. And there is another difference too, Tom and Max are there, they sit on either side of Lauri and Joe.

Joe shoves a drink in his hand the moment he sees Will and pulls him into one of his crushing hugs, grinning and saying he is glad to see Will. Lauri is the happiest Will has seen her in years, she watches Joe the whole night with a lovestruck look and Joe does the same, pulling her against him and pressing quick kisses to her cheeks. All in all there is about ten people cramped around the table, listening to every word that pours out of Joe’s mouth with razor-sharp attention. Will can see why Joe was promoted to Second Lieutenant, he has a magnetism about that calls all to him, he inspires something in people and he bets Joe’s men will follow him into enemy fire without a moment’s hesitation. 

The evening passes, the sun disappears into the horizon and the stars come out to greet them. Will has had a few fair drinks and the world has slowed down and warmed up to such a degree everything has the faint shimmer of a long-forgotten memory. 

He tries to catch Tom’s eye from across the table but it seems Tom is still hellbent on ignoring Will, his stubbornness won’t let him let go of his anger for Will’s enlistment. Will tries not to let him affect him because it doesn’t matter, does it? Tom is happy, he hasn’t stopped smiling the whole evening and it’s all because of Joe’s return. Will sighs and drinks some more.

“Oh, Will, _mon cherie, c’est nest pas juste.”_ Lauri says as she gets up from her seat to walk around the table and wrap her arms around Will’s shoulders. _This isn’t fair._ She presses her cheek to his and lets out a long sigh, _“Joe est de retour mais tu pars.”Joe is back but you are leaving._

He wants to say _I will come back_ , he wants to say _everything will be fine_ but he doesn’t want to fill them with empty promises. War is an unpredictable, cruel beast and it has consumed many men. He says none of that, he has no desire to make her cry on the day her fiancee returns to marry her after almost two years at war. Instead, Will pulls her arms off him, he stands up and hugs her. 

“ _Je sais, je sais,_ ” he whispers as she hugs him back. _I know, I know._

She feels small and fragile in his arms, has she always been this small? 

She pulls back slightly to look up at him. Her lower lip quivering slightly, “ _v_ _ous allez me manquer.”_

“ _Tu me manqueras aussi_.” He gives her his warmest smile. _I’ll miss you too._

☾

Joe and Lauri marry in the morning. It is a quick, quiet affair as Father Fairchild has to squeeze them in between two christenings and he has to be in Chelmsford for a funeral. Apparently, he didn’t take much convincing when Joe asked him to marry him and Lauri. Father Fairchild seemed to carry some guilt for the anguish Joe suffered when his daughter broke his heart and left for Scotland to marry some wealthy suitor. Apparently, he is honoured to be a part of Joe finding the love of his life.A dozen or so people, including Joe and Lauri’s respective families and friends, sit in the pews, watching the young lovers pledge to spend their remaining days together. 

“Now that Joseph and Lauri have given themselves to each other by solemn vows, with the joining of hands, and the giving and receiving of rings,” Father Fairchild declares, spreading his arms apart, “I announce to you that they are husband and wife; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder.” 

Joe leans down and Lauri rises onto her tip toes to meet him in a soft kiss. Will smiles, his heart warming. On the front rows, Elsie and Henry are beaming with pride. Tom whistles and rolls his eyes when Elsie swats him for making such a racket at her brother’s wedding. Lauri’s aunt, Mrs. Baumer, sniffs and wipes her tears away with handkerchief. Mr. Baumer couldn’t make the ceremony as he had an important meeting inLondon but he will be at the reception later on. Max looks more than elated to see his older cousin finally wed the love of her life. Kara cannot make the ceremony or the reception. She left for the V.A.D two weeks ago. Will, Lauri and Blanche saw her off at the station. She gave him one last kiss on the cheek before she stepped onto the train and it took her away.

Joe is grinning impossibly wide when they separate and Lauri’s cheeks are flushed pink. 

Father Fairchild smiles as he says, “I introduce to you, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Blake.” 

Joe and Lauri are beaming at each other as everyone stands to clap. 

☾

The reception is a lively, wonderful affair that goes on well into the evening. The plan was to have it at the village hall but they couldn’t book it at such short notice. The night before, Will begged Nan to let Joe and Lauri have their reception in their extensive back garden. She does always like to say that it could fit a small army. Nan agreed because she found Lauri and her French accent utterly charming and she thought it was the least Joe deserved for making it back home after two years at war. She lamented that the last person with that kind of strength had been Will’s late grandfather. 

It was a stressful scramble to organise the garden for a reception with only a few hours until the ceremony but they did it. Where the ceremony was small, the reception is packed with more than sixty people thanks to Joe’s drunken antics last night. He stood up on a table in the middle of the pub and declared that everyone was invited to his wedding reception tomorrow. In any other place that wouldn’t be advised but Joe knows everyone in this tiny village and this tiny village has seen him grow up. In many ways, they are an extension of his family.

“Will, _ecouté_ ,” Lauri says as she loops her arm through his and guides him to the far corner of the garden where the conversation becomes a faint din. “Joe and I will not be leaving for our honeymoon tonight.” 

Will doesn’t ask where they plan to honeymoon as, more than once, his childhood governess grilled into him that a couple’s destination was a private matter. Instead, he asks,“Why?” 

“Because you are leaving tomorrow morning and we want to say goodbye,” she explains, “we will leave about an hour after you.” 

The gesture warms him to his core but he cannot allow them to sacrifice the dwindling time Joe and Lauri have together for him. 

He shakes his head and opens his mouth to object when Lauri cuts in, “ _non_ , Joe and I shall meet you outside your house tomorrow morning and we will go to the station together. I cannot bear to see you go without a proper goodbye, _mon cherie_.”

“I — okay,” Will says, knowing it’s useless to argue with Lauri when she gets that determined look in her eye. He smiles, “I’ve been meaning to say…you look beautiful.”

A crown of blue hydrangeas and white jasmines sit atop her golden hair which has been curled and wrapped up in loose roll that frames her heart-shaped face. Her silk wedding gown fits her beautifully too, the scoop neck is adorned with lace and beading around the collar that has a piece cascading down from the left side. It’s no wonder Joe has not been able to take his eyes off her all night. 

Lauri beams, “ _merci, mon cherie_.”

Sometime later, when the food has been served and the cake (a delicious two-tiered Victoria sponge Tom and his mother spent last night making) has been cut, Will watches from his seat as Joe and Lauri dance to the sweet, dreamy notes of the piano Nan plays near the patio. It took three of them to drag the piano out into the garden and despite his now aching back, Will is glad of it. He won’t have the time nor the strength to drag it back into the dining room tomorrow but Tom promised him, Max and Killy would do it. 

Joe and Lauri sway to the music, gazing adoringly at each other and perhaps, love, _proper_ lasting love is real and perhaps, even crazier yet, it is something that can be found. He thought he might have found it with Kara but no such luck. Fortune favours the brave, isn’t that the saying? But he doesn’t know to be brave. It doesn’t bode well for him, does it?

Sometime later again, when half the guests are drunk, Will and Joe sit on the short stone steps that lead up to the circular fish pond behind them. They have been chatting and drinking quietly here for the last hour. 

“Tell me, soon-to-be Private Schofield,” Joe says, looking at him, “are you scared?”

He’s been waiting for someone to ask him this question. If Tom were talking to him, it would something he asked.

“Yes,” Will answers simply. Fortune favours the brave when it should favour the truth. “Were you scared?”

“No,” Joe says, “but I should have been. I was stupidly naive. You want to know something?”

“What?”

“I lied about my age,” he says.

“How? Eighteen is—”

“Yeah but you have to be nineteen to be sent abroad otherwise you’re just dossing about, y’know?” Joe says, “after Lauri declined my proposal, I couldn’t stand to be in the country a second longer so I told them I was a year older than I actually was to get myself sent to the front quicker.” He puffs out a breath, “I had all these…grandiose ideas about war from all the books, okay, two books I read and the stories Granddad told me about Crimea. I thought I knew war, I thought I understood it. Two years in France have taught me I know nothing of war and I will never understand it.” He takes a deep gulp of his drink and sighs, “it’s such a waste of life.”

Will leans forward onto his knees. “Do you regret it? Do you regret rushing off to join like that? Do you regret joining at all?”

Joe is quiet for a long drawn out moment. Laugh and chatter echoes in the garden.

“I used to,” he begins, “about a week after my first battle when the full weight of what I had seen and done finally sunk in, I regretted every decision that led me to the trenches. I regretted my whole life…but recently—” he pauses to look over at Lauri dancing with Tom in the middle of the garden, “I’ve come to realise regret is useless. Every decision made is the right one at the time. No one sets out to make bad choices, do they? At the time, I didn’t want to wallow in self-pity like I had when Sadie Fairchild left me. I wanted action and distraction and the war offered exactly that.” He looks at Will, smiling now, “every decision I have ever made has led me to meeting you, to marrying Lauri, so, no, I don’t regret it and I’ll never regret anything ever again. I think it’s better to learn from those choices than regret them.”

Will finishes the last of his drink, “and what have you learnt from yours?” 

“Number one lesson is definitely talk to your family before joining the greatest war in history,” Joe says with a bellowing laugh. 

Will laughs too. He looks into his empty glass. His smile fades. 

“Almost out,” Joe says, standing up and grabbing both their glasses, “I’m gonna top us up.” 

Will sits there for a minute or two, watching the guests and lamenting Joe’s words before he gets up too. He needs the loo. He walks back into the house and heads up stairs to the bathroom as the one downstairs is occupied. To his surprise Tom is there, washing his hands in the sink as he stumbles around. Will bites back a laugh, wondering just how much Tom has drank. He tries to turn off the tap but he fails, after a few more attempts Will leans over and turns it off for him. 

“I did it,” Tom says, his speech slurred from the hours of drinking, he glances at his hands, “oh wait, I don’t have three arms, what—” he glances up at Will and his eyes widen then as if he has encountered a fabled ghost. His cheeks are already flushed but the flush deepens as he visibly swallows. “W—Will.”

“How much have you had Tom?” He asks, wondering if he needs to take him home to stop him from getting anymore drunk. 

Tom doesn’t say anything, he just leans his head against the wall and stares up at Will with an expression of an awe, it is kind expression worn when staring up at the majesty of the stars. 

“Tom,” Will says, worry entwining with the haziness brought on by the pint Joe encouraged him to down in a few seconds. “Tom, are you okay?” 

“Don’t,” Tom says.

“What?” Will says as he twists around to grab a few rolls of tissue paper from windowsill. 

“Don’t go,” Tom says behind him. 

He turns back and takes Tom’s hands and starts drying them with the tissue for him because he seems too out of it to do it himself. When he’s done, he scrunches it up and throws it in the bin.

“Tom,” Will meets Tom’s gaze. “I have to. You know, I have to….and…” He shouldn’t say the next bit but the alcohol has loosened his tongue and he’s tired of walking on eggshells, “…and besides, I don’t think you want me around. This way you’re—”

Tom tenses then, his eyes widening as if he has been doused with freezing cold water. “What — what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Will shrugs, then he licks his lips and glances away, “I feel as if you hate me now.”

“Is that what you think?” Tom whispers and it’s the desperation in his voice that makes Will look at him. He reaches forward and grabs Will by the collars of his shirt, yanking him forward. Will lets out a small gasp as he puts a hand out against the wall to himself from crashing into Tom. Tom stares up at him, that starstruck look taking over his face and under the amber lights, his blue eyes look brighter than ever. “You think I hate you?”

“Do you not?” Will whispers back.

Tom’s Adam apple bobs as he swallows. He stares at up Will as one hand remains on his collar and with the other, he wraps his fingers around Will’s tie. And there it is, that stifling tension that has been sitting between them for months and for the life of him Will cannot put a name to it. 

“ _Je ne,_ ” Tom says in a rough voice, _I don’t._ He groans and drops his head on Will’s chest. _“Tu as l'air vraiment bien ce soir…tu sens bon aussi, tu sens toujours bon.” You look really good tonight…you smell good too, you always smell good._ He lets go of Will’s collar and tie and slides both his arms under his Will’s blazer to wrap them around his waist. He pulls Will against him, “ _Je ne sais pas ce que je vais faire sans toi ici.” I don’t know what I’m going to do without you here._

Will’s face heats up at the sudden proximity. It is becoming rather difficult to think. His thoughts are flying away before they are even fully formed. Somewhere in the back of his alcohol-addled mind, he knows Tom is drunk and so is he but he needs to be the adult here and push him away before either of them does anything stupid but try as he might he cannot move. He doesn't want to.

Tom looks up at him, his eyes seem bluer than ever in that moment. “ _Will_ ,” he whispers his name like he has at an alter, ready to drop to his knees in prayer, “ _je ne peux plus m'en empêcher.” I cannot help it anymore._

Thanks to some miracle, Will is able to find his voice. “You cannot help what anymore?” 

Tom blinks ever so slowly, his gaze flitting across Will’s face before he rises up and for a manic, heartstopping second Will thinks Tom is going to kiss him but he just drops his forehead onto Will’s shoulder and mumbles something in German this time. Worse yet, some berserk, remote part of him is disappointed. His alarm and his heart rises once again when Tom pushes him against the corner wall and he buries his face in his neck. 

Will draws in a sharp, hissing breath. “ _Tom_ ,” he rasps, “Tom, what are you doing?”

Tom says nothing and Will can hear his own blood pounding through his ears. Startling alarm intertwines with the dizzy effect of the rum he shared with Joe and the buzzing, electric pulses skittering across his skin as Tom’s lips graze his neck. Tom is mouthing something into his skin, Will’s name or something else, he doesn’t know, all he knows is that this close, Tom smells like freshly baked bread and cherry blossoms and this has alarming levels of _wrong_ because Tom is only sixteen and he is a dear friend and for Christ sake’s, he is Joe’s little brother and worse yet, worse than before, there is the staccato beat under everything that this is _right, right, right_ and — he grips Tom’s arms with both hands and wrenches him back. 

Will can feel his face burning and his heart refuses to calm down, it’s like he has been on a ten-mile run. It’s just silence for a long, drawn-out moment as they watch each other.

Tom stares at him with those wide blue eyes and reddened cheeks, his dark hair falls over his forehead in loose, messy curls and Will’s heart almost gives out at the sight.

Will flounders as he tries to remember how to speak. He lets go of Tom’s arms, “Tom, you’re drunk, this isn’t…”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just…” Tom starts, swaying slightly as he puts his hand out against the rim of the sink to steady himself. “ _Ich glaube, ich liebe dich und weiß nicht, was ich tun soll.”_

If Will wasn’t still a little drunk and still reeling from the everything that just happened, he would be impressed by Tom’s easy command of German and he would ask Tom who has been teaching him. Max doesn’t have the patience, it’s probably Lauri. Perhaps, he has lost interest in French and he seeks a newer language.

Tom breathes in, “I need…”

“Do you want some water?” Will asks, already choosing to forget this ever happened. 

Tom shakes his head as he straightens himself up. “No, you oblivious numpty, I need…” he snaps his fingers, “…more cider! I am not drunk enough for this.”

Will frowns, “you’re quite drunk already, I don’t think—”

“I don’t care what you think,” he says, walking past Will to get to the door, “you’re leaving and you won’t even fight to stay, so, bye, Will.”

He slams the door behind him. Will closes his eyes, sighing as his knees finally buckle and he slides down against the wall and slumps onto the floor.

**☾**

Will wakes up with a slight headache the morning he is meant to leave. Nan wanted to walk him to the train station and wave him off but her hip is acting up again and she cannot move from her bed. 

“It’s all the dancing I did last night,” she tells him when he brings her breakfast on a tray. “I haven’t danced like that since…truthfully, I can hardly remember.”

He sits at the end of the bed as he munches on an apple he plucked from the tree in the back garden. She tries to offer him some of her food but he declines, the nerves bundling up in his stomach won’t allow him to keep down a whole meal. 

When she’s done, he takes her plate downstairs and he goes back up to her room to find her crying. Will leans over and hugs her, she sniffs and whispers a soft prayer for his safety into his shoulder. He leaves her in bed, smiling sadly at him before he closes the door, grabs his bags and walks out of the front door. To his pleasant surprise, Joe and Lauri are waiting for him by the tall hedges that surround the house. They stand close to each other, holding hands and talking quietly to themselves. It is a picture of new love and it makes Will’s chest ache in some way he doesn’t understand. Perhaps it is because the war may have stolen his chance at finding love. He had been beginning to entertain that possibility with Kara but such thoughts must be thrown away. The only thing that matters now is survival and somewhere down the line, an end to the war. 

“Alright, Will?” Joe says when he reaches them. 

“ _Comment ça va_?” Lauri asks, giving him a concerned look. _How are you?_

“I’m fine,” Will says without thinking. 

He has decided not to pay attention to his feelings during this whole ordeal, it only serves to make it all the more miserable. It doesn’t matter how he feels about it. The situation is clear. War has called his name and he must answer.

Will glances around, looking up and down the dirt path that snakes away from his house. “Is…Tom coming?”

He hasn’t told anyone about what happened in the bathroom in last night. There is nothing to say, nothing happened, did it? His pulse is already picking up at the memory. After Will had calmed down he had gone downstairs to check on Tom but Blanche said she had seen him leave with a couple bottles of cider and Max and Killy in tow. 

Lauri and Joe cast each other unsure glances before they look at Will. Joe says, “I don’t know, mate, we stayed at that inn in the outskirts of the village last night. If he’s not already here…”

Maybe he’s embarrassed about last night and he cannot face Will. 

Lauri smiles, “I am sure he will come to say goodbye. Max is already at the train station waiting to say goodbye—”

“—and Tom did drink a lot at the reception last night so—”

“It’s fine,” Will tells them even though it isn’t. Briefly, he wonders how he ruined that relationship. It doesn’t matter now. He glances at his wristwatch, “we should go, my train is in fifteen minutes.” 

Will catches the uncertain glances Joe and Lauri give each other as he starts walking. They linger behind him for a few seconds, whispering to each other before they jog to catch up with him. 

“Let me carry this mate,” Joe says, taking Will’s bag from him. 

Lauri comes up to his side and loops her arm through his, she tugs him close as they walk through the golden fields. 

“Lauri,” Will says. 

“ _Oui?_ ” 

He isn’t sure how else to say it. He settles for Tom’s peculiar brand of brashness. “Would you please look after my grandmother while I’m…away,” he says, “you might be one of the few people in the village she likes and it would truly put my mind at ease.” 

He would have asked Tom to do it but he cannot read Tom these days. He’s all over the place and Will doesn’t know how to talk to him without Tom snapping at him or making an excuse to leave. 

Joe laughs, “he’s right about that, she bloody loves you.”

“ _Bien sûr, tout ce que je peux faire pour aider._ ” Lauri says, letting out a soft chuckle and smiling up at Will. _Of course, anything I can do to help._

_“_ _Merci mille fois. Je ne peux pas partir sans savoir qu'elle ira bien,”_ Will sighs, feeling some nagging weight lift off his shoulders. _Thank you a thousand times. I cannot leave without knowing she will be okay._

Beside her, Joe pouts and says, “can we speak English please? Some of us aren’t bilingual.”

“ _Désolée, mon nounours,”_ Lauri giggles and rubs Joe’s arm up and down. _Sorry, my teddy bear._ “You have been in France for two years, I am surprised you have not learnt basic French.”

“ _Ah_ , might be because I’m too busy avoiding Bosche shells to get a French tutor.”

She waves a hand in the air, “a French tutor for what? Your wife is a native speaker.”

Joe seems to radiate with happiness at the reminder Lauri is his wife. Will worries they are going to start snogging in front of him. 

They have to pass Rainford Library to get to the station, Will gives it one last longing look before they follow the sharp turn of the road and reach the station. It’s oddly silent when Will, Lauri and Joe step onto the platform. There’s not even the sound of a birdsong, there is no wind rustling or conversation. It is silent and empty as if there have reached a particular vacant spot of space and time. 

Will glances at his wristwatch. _Two minutes._ He should have been here ten minutes ago as he likes to get anywhere early but he wanted to spend more time with his grandmother. Lord knows when he will see her again. 

_“Attendez,”_ Lauri says, hovering a hand over her eyes to shield from the morning sun, “is that Tom?” 

“Where?” Will says, his pulse picking up once again at the mention of his name. He glances around at the platform.

Lauri shakes her head and points to the opposite platform, “there. I think he is with Max.”

Will follows the direction of Lauri’s finger and there, snoozing under the metal post that reads RAINFORDare Tom and Max. They are both asleep, Max has his head bent back as Tom sleeps soundly in his lap. Will’s heart skips a beat and for a split second he allows himself the feeling of elation. 

“They’re still in their suits,” Joe comments, “…did they sleep here last night?”

The idea is startling and endearing at the same time, that Tom didn’t want to miss saying goodbye to Will he drunkenly left the reception and camped out at the train station all night. Perhaps that is wishful thinking. Thomas Blake has become somewhat of a mystery to him these days.

“I think so,” Will mumbles, reeling from the idea that Tom would do such a thing for him all of people. 

“ _Oi!_ ” Joe cups his mouth around his mouth and shouts, “Tom! Max! Wake up!”

Max is the one who is startled awake, he looks around groggily and when he spots Joe and Lauri waving at him, he blinks and nudges Tom awake. Tom bats Max’s hand away but when Max says something, Tom leaps up and looks over the platform. 

It’s then the signal starts sounding, the shrill sound of a bell to letting everyone know the barriers are closing and the train is approaching.Tom closes his eyes, wincing at the sound before they fly wide open when he realises the meaning. 

“He’s on the wrong platform,” Will says more to himself than anyone else.

Joe glances at him and then back at Tom and Max, in his loudest voice, he bellows, “Will’s train here, come to our platform now!”

Tom jumps off the bench in a flash, leaving Max confused as he disappears down the stairs. Will glances down the platform to see his train approaching them. 

“Don’t worry mate, he’ll make it, ” Joe says, slapping a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Plus, I’ll be down in France by Sunday. Who knows…we might run into each other on the Front.”

“I hope not,” Will says, “but you shouldn’t worry about the front, you’re leaving for your honeymoon today, enjoy it.”

Joe chuckles, “ _oh_ , I will.”

The train slides into the station, grinding to a halt before them. Will smiles and he pulls Joe in for a hug. He pats Will’s back and whispers for him to stay safe. When he pulls away, he turns to hug Lauri. She kisses his cheek and promises to send him ample poetry to read in France.

“You’re joining the Eighth, right?” Joe asks when he pulls away from Lauri. Will nods as Joe hands him his bag back and says, “remember, Mayor Leslie’s son is a lieutenant in the Eighth, if you let him know you’re from Rainford he’ll look out for you. He’s a grumpy bastard but he’s a good man.”

“Sure,” Will says, glancing around the platform for any sign of Tom but he’s nowhere to be seen. Surely, it cannot take that long to run here? He cannot wait any longer. The next train to London is in three days and he doesn’t fancy going to jail for failing to turn up to training. He pulls the metal door of the train open and steps inside. 

“ _Will!_ ” 

The familiar voice cuts through the busy noise of the train. He spins around to see Tom running towards him. Tom comes to a stop before him, bent over with his hands on his thighs as he struggles to catch his breath. Tom looks up and Will is enthralled by his eyes, big and bright blue like the sky above them. Last night springs up in his mind again, Tom’s warm mouth on his neck and the roughness of his voice when he spoke, Will’s grip on the bag tightens as he wills the memory away. 

“Oh, bloody hell,” Tom pants as he tugs at his tie to loosen it, “ _Will.”_

“Tom,” Will says because it is the only thing he can say in that moment.

Tom straightens, he looks more distressed than Will has ever seen him and it wrenches something inside him. 

Tom draws in a breath, “Will, listen, I'm sorry about how I've been acting lately, I just, you're my best friend and I—”

A sharp whistle pierces the air. It’s time to go. 

“Tom get back,” Joe says, reaching forward to rest a hand on Tom’s shoulder, “the train is leaving.”

Tom shrugs Joe’s hand off, his gaze doesn’t leave Will’s as he says, “ _Will_ —”

“Were you out here all night?” Will asks because he has to know. “Were you waiting for me?”

That curious blush spreads across Tom’s cheeks. He presses his mouth into a fine line before he says, “yeah, I didn’t want to miss my chance to see you off.”

“ _Move!”_ A gruff voice shouts. Will and Tom look to the front of the train where the conductor is hanging out of the window. The man glares at them, “I’m on a schedule. Either get on or get back!”

Tom frowns as he steps back, his eyes widening as his chest rises up and down. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

Will is torn between the truth as he sees it; _I’m not sure if I will_ and the lie as he would like to see it; _of course, I will._ The train jolts to life as it starts creaking along the tracks. Will closes the door and leans out of the small window. 

“I don’t know,” he says. He cannot bring himself to lie to Tom. “I hope so.”

Tom starts jogging along with the train as it picks up speed.

“You’re coming back, Will!” he shouts.

In the distance, Will sees Max appear from the stairs behind Lauri and Joe. He waves half-heartedly at Will. 

Tom skids to a halt when he reaches the edge of the platform.  He leans over the metal railing and keeps on shouting, “you’re coming back even if I have to go to France and drag you home myself!”

Despite everything, it draws a smile from Will. Perhaps him and Tom are going to be okay. 

* * *

**May**

_Dear Nan,_

_I hope you are well. I arrived in Kingston over a month ago now. I had my hair shaved down into a military cut on my second night and feel that I look like Bill Sykes. It is not the most flattering cut. Oh, it is a different life here and comes hard at first. I share a room with ten other boys, we sleep on bunk beds fit for young children but I cannot complain as two other boys arrived too late to claim a bed and they sleep with four blankets on the hard floor._ _I didn’t get used to it until last night which was my first night’s proper rest. The food is fair but served very rough and not enough after the drills you have to go through. The weather has of course been very bad and the washing facilities for clothes here are terrible._

_I was inoculated last Thursday but was not so bad but some of the fellows felt it. I expect I shall have a time with the next lot but hope I don’t as they have not got much sympathy and of course there is no comfort. A lot of fellows (about four hundred and fifty) have been shifted (Saturday and today) to Roussillon and rumour says we shall all probably go there too when we get fitted out as they are making a new camp there with three new companies. I may say that four of our chaps who were lucky to get their outfit last week were moved to Roussillon this afternoon. I believe I am to be next but there is still another two months of training left._

_It cannot be worse than here which is very dreary and lonely. Perhaps lonely is not the right word as I have reunited with an old friend from my Eton days. You may remember him, George Parry. About a week into my arrival I had been in line in the mess tent for supper when I saw him glaring at his plate of food in disgust. I had sat down with him and we had immediately caught up on the last three years, it feels as if no time has passed at all. He introduced me to one of his roommates, Francis Butler, a brash, bright-eyed boy from Yorkshire who reminds me of Tom. Butler and Parry make the days at Kingston more bearable, sometimes, it hardly feels like we are training for war but that I am back in Eton with my old friends._

_Army ways are funny and I have already found out a lot of which I trust I shall one day be able to tell you. I forget to tell you we all got split up into different huts when we arrived and mine is about a mile away from the camp. Well I bid you all adieu for the present._ _I think of you often and only wish I was back again but it has to be done and one can only hope the end will come soon. Goodnight._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Will_

* * *

**June**

One hot night in early summer, Will dreams of Rainford. He dreams of the countless sheep grazing on the endless green hills, of Idun’s tree deep in the lush forest but most of all, he dreams of Tom. He dreams of Tom standing on the broken roof of Danecroft Castle, dressed in a loose shirt with his hands stuffed into a pair of dark pants, his curly hair ruffling in the wind as he looks out onto the village below. Will cannot see Tom’s face as he stands behind him and when he opens his mouth to call Tom’s name, the wind takes it and Tom hears nothing. He tries to call Tom again but the wind rips the name from his mouth and he tries to walk to him but the wind has picked up, stronger than ever and it keeps him planted to the spot. 

He screams — a hand is slammed over his mouth and he opens his eyes to find Butler looming above him. Butler keeps his hand on Will’s mouth as he presses one finger to his own and quietly shushes him. 

“We’re going out,” Butler whispers.

Somewhere across the dark room, Parry says, “get dressed, Schofield.”

Butler takes his hand off Will’s mouth.

“I don’t understand,” he says, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he tries to make sense of everything. “What’s going on?” 

Butler shoves a pile of clothes on Will’s chest, “No time to explain, just get dressed.” 

Will frowns and Parry chuckles. He says, “everything’s fine mate, we promise, we’re just going out.”

Will stares up at them, “out where?”

**☾**

Bushy Park is eerie yet beautiful in the night. The moon hangs full and bulbous in the clear, black sky. Its silver light transforms the world into something from a Grim fairytale, the kind Nan would tell him when she visited the manor back in Cookham. 

The summer night is heavy with the scent of lavenders and freshly cut grass. Heron Pond glistens in the moonlight. Butler yanked off his clothes the second it came into view and jumped in without a second thought. Will and Parry sit on the flat banks of the iridescent pond, watching Butler swim and occasionally comment on how pretty the night is. Parry drinks from the wine bottle he stole from home and snuck into his luggage.

“Is this a good idea?” Will asks, glancing at his wristwatch. It takes a bit more effort to read the time in the dim light, “reveille is in two hours.”

“Scho,” Parry says, putting the wine bottle down. He pulls out a cigarette pack and lighter from his jacket pocket. He yanks out one cigarette and shoves the pack away. “I stopped worrying about good ideas when our government decided to fuck democracy and drag us all into this war.” 

The reminder of the tragic state of the world makes him want to scream. He grabs the wine bottle and spins the lid open. 

“Did you bring cups?” Will asks, knowing it’s a futile question but hoping otherwise. 

The look Parry gives him confirms the futility. He says, “I’m afraid not, your majesty.”

“Shut up,” Will grumbles before he takes a long swig of the wine. He grimaces, “bloody hell, is this rosé?” 

“Mother had a party the night before I left, there wasn’t much alcohol left.” He runs a hand down his face, “It’s funny, she said it was for me…to see me off in style but — truly, it was to show off to her country club friends that another one of her sons was fighting for King and Country. A few of her friends have close ties with the royals.” Parry says, flicking the lighter on and off. He sighs, “sometimes I think my brother dying in Loos was the best thing that has ever happened to her. She revels in the attention she gets as a mourning mother and I cannot help but think if I die in France, it will be the second best thing that’s ever happened to her. The mother of two dead soldiers? She will be insufferable.”

Parry looks up at the stars and sighs again.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Will says, hesitating for a moment before he reaches out and squeezes Parry’s shoulder. Joe does it to Tom when he’s upset. “I didn’t know.”

“Thanks,” Parry says and then looks at him, “I’m sorry about your father.”

Will tenses, letting go of Parry’s shoulder. He shrugs, “it’s fine.”

It was Father’s birthday two weeks ago, which also marks the day he hung himself. Will had buried himself in training, not allowing one thought about the man to enter his head. He only thought of Nan and that she would have to endure this day alone. 

“Is it?” Parry says, “you left Eton three days after you found out. You didn’t say goodbye. You didn’t write to me either.”

“I—I know, I’m sorry,” he says, wincing at the memory. Nan had arrived at Eton with sad eyes and soft commands for him to pack his things away as it was time to leave. “Everything happened quite quickly. One day I was debating the Revolution of 1848 with you and Hutton and the next day I was in some tiny village in Essex listening to my grandmother’s latest gossip. I wanted to write to you, I did but the longer I left the less I felt you wanted to hear from me.”

Parry doesn’t say anything for a while. Nearby, crickets chirp and Butler splashes in the water. Parry flicks open the lighter, “Hutton is dead.”

“What?”

“He died in Loos,” Parry goes on, “bullet right in the eye.”

Will whispers, “Oh my God.” 

Alfred Hutton had been his roommate in Eton. He had been a pious, anxious boy and Will wonders if he had the chance to pray to the Lord before the bullet hit him. The last time he saw Hutton he helped Will carry his luggage down the spiralling stairs and into the car that awaited him in the street. Hutton had shook Will’s hand and told him he would be in his prayers.

Butler starts screaming, splashing around in the water and making Will and Parry jump.

“Oh, _God!_ Something bit me!” Butler shouts.

“Bloody hell,” Will gets up, ready to jump in there and pull him out when Parry tugs him back down. 

Parry puts the cigarette in his mouth, “three, two…”

“Oh, wait, it was just a stick!” Butler says with a laugh. “It’s all good!”

He dips under the water. 

“Idiot,” Parry mumbles as he flicks the lighter open and burns the tip of the cigarette. He flicks it close and tucks it into front pocket of his jacket. He takes a puff and blows it out. He smirks, “I don’t know what I see in him.”

Will smiles as Butler floats onto his back and tries to count each star in the sky. He says, “have you told him?”

Parry just scoffs again.

“I think you should,” Will says with a shrug, “we’re being shipped off tomorrow, Lord knows what France holds for any of us.”

Parry gives Will a curious look, his blue eyes turn silver under the moonlight. He blows smoke out from the side of his mouth. “ _You_ , Mr. Repressed, wants to tell me about expressing my feelings?”

Will frowns, “I’m not repressed.”

People think because he keeps to himself and he knows how to control himself he is repressed.

“Rather, you’re _less_ repressed than you were in Eton,” he says, flicking the ash off the cigarette. “Rainford must be good for you.”

_It is,_ Will thinks,, suddenly wishing to be back there more than anything.

“Besides,” Parry says, glancing back at Butler in the water, “he already knows, I wanted to make things official tonight, get some wine, a little midnight picnic by the lake, _maybe_ get lucky since its our last night before — you know…but then he got excited and invited you along, not that I mind. It’s better we’re all together.” Parry looks at Will and barks out a laugh, “are you blushing? I didn’t even go into details, mate.” He leans into Will with a raised eyebrow, “should I go into details? I wanted to climb on top of him and ride—”

Will shoves him and Parry falls back onto the grass as he keeps laughing. 

“I don’t want to hear about the particulars of your love life, Parry.” He says, his face burning. 

“Oi!” Butler calls from the lake, he waves a hand in the air, “come in, the water’s lovely!”

Parry puts the cigarette out on the grass. 

“Coming!” He shouts back, already pushing himself to stand up and toe off his boots. He takes his clothes off until he is left in his underpants. He glances down at Will with that infuriating smirk, “which was my plan tonight by the way—”

Will throws a stick at him, it hits Parry in the back of the head. Parry just laughs and runs, leaping into the water with a big splash. 

“Scho!” Butler shouts, “come in!” 

Will puts the lid back on the wine bottle. He pulls off his clothes and shoes before he tucks them neatly on the grass and runs to join his friends in the lake. 

* * *

**July**

**2 hours, 14 minutes to go**

“Odd, isn’t it,” Parry remarks, blowing out a puff of smoke from the cigarette hanging between his fingers.

Will brings his knees up and rests his elbows atop them.He glances at his friend. “What is?”

The sun rose half an hour ago. Will and Parry sit on the outskirts of camp in the fields with the crickets chirping in the distance and the tall grass swaying and rustling in the cool wind. Parry woke him up an hour ago, whispering he couldn’t sleep and they walked and walked until they reached this quiet spot. They left Butler to sleep as he has been nervous about the upcoming battle for the last week and he needs all the sleep he can get. Additionally, Butler tends to be insufferable if he doesn’t get at least six hours of sleep.

“It feels like we’re about to go off for a picnic rather than a battle,” Parry says. 

Will glances up at the sky, the bright blue shade reminds him of Tom and how Tom stared at him on that platform as Will’s train sped away, wide-eyed and distraught. If it wasn’t for the thin streaks of clouds that mar the perfect blue it would be a clear day. If it wasn’t for the battle they face it would be a perfect day for a picnic. 

“I would prefer a picnic over a battle any day,” Will says, aiming for humour but the dread within him turns his words cold, and regretful. Quickly, he looks to distract from this by adding, “it’s my friend’s birthday today.”

“My God,” Parry says, taking a long drag of his cigarette. He blows out the smoke. It goes drifting up into the bright sky. “Imagine that….spending your birthday in battle.”

He cannot. He can barely believe he’s in northern France only hours away from his first battle as a soldier. The funny thing is, before his father’s death, he was going to spend the summer in Paris with some family friends. He thought those plans had been dashed upon Father’s demise but here he is. The Lord has a funny way of giving one what they desire. 

“How old is he today?” Parry asks. 

“Twenty.”

He prays Joe survives this. He prays they all do. He thinks of Hutton and his penchant for praying and he wonders what good that did in the end. 

“Is this the one that joined up the minute the war was announced?” Parry asks, “your mate from the village?” 

Will nods as he starts pulling at the grass. 

Parry hums, “Two years at war…brave man.”

Behind them, a voice shouts, “arseholes!”

Will and Parry glance back to see Butler wading through the tall grass to reach them. Will smiles and Parry laughs when Butler slumps down to sit between them. Butler snaps his fingers at Parry who rolls his eyes and gives Butler a cigarette from the pack he keeps in his front pocket. 

“Do they not teach manners up north?” Parry grumbles as he holds out the lighter for Butler.

Butler just grins when he's lit his cigarette. He blows out the smoke and leans over to press a quick kiss to Parry’s cheek. He glances between Will and Parry and laughs, “oh, c’mon, lads, cheer up!”

Will and Parry give him the same confused look. Will says, “pardon?” 

“We’ll be fine, Haig’s got this in the bag,” Butler says with that grin.

Will’s eyebrows furrow, “What bag?” 

Parry chuckles, “it’s this silly idiom his American cousin taught him last week and he hasn’t stopped using it.” He leans past Butler to look at Will, “he means Haig’s plan is foolproof.”

Butler’s grin only seems to widen. “Don’t you get it?” He says, glancing between the two of them again, “ _this is it._ This is the day we break the Bosche line. Hell, this is the day we send those bastards running! This—” Butler blows out a puff of smoke, “—is history in the making, lads.” 

“But…what kind of history?” Will asks. 

“Winner’s, obviously,” Butler says and holds the cigarette out for Will, “here.”

“No, thanks,” he says with the slight shake of his head. He has never been able to stand the smell.

“Suit yourself,” Butler shrugs and goes back to smoking.

Parry groans, “I’m hungry, when’s breakfast?”

Despite everything, despite the battle looming over them, Will laughs. “How can you be hungry? I’ll throw up if I eat.”

“It’s at six,” Butler says

“ _Yes_ ,” Parry whispers.

“Don’t get too excited,” Will says, “it will be biscuits again.”

Butler glances at Will, “Scho, you oughta have something mate, we got a long day ahead.”

“Even if it is those horrid biscuits,” Parry adds. 

Will hums in response and lies back on the grass, folding his arms under his head. Parry lays his head on Butler’s shoulder. Butler smiles at him before he closes his eyes and rests his own head atop Parry’s. A pair of ravens fly across, their dark wings stark against the bright sky. In the far distance, the shellfire bombardment rings out, it throbs in Will’s ear, calling them to join. 

**45 minutes to go**

The call to war is one of violence and terror. Shellfire cascades all around them, so much and with such intensity it should be felt around the world. Hundreds of troops march through the labyrinthine paths of the trenches. 

“What you are witnessing right now…!” Lieutenant Richards bellows over the hailing shellfire as he stands atop a milk crate to address the throng of soldiers, “…is the greatest bombardment in the history of the world! From Beaumont Hamlet down to the marshes of the Somme, we are raining hell on the Germans!”

The crowd cheers and Will joins in, clapping and whistling, finding himself emboldened by Parry and Butler’s excitement and Richards’ stunning rhetoric. 

“The strength of our artillery is unprecedented!” Richards shouts on, his face has turned red from the effort, “once our bombardment is finished, you will be left with the easiest job of all. You will be able to go over the top with a walking stick. You will not need rifles. When you get to Thiepval you will find the Germans all dead. Not even a rat will have survived!”

The cheers almost, _almost_ drown out the screaming shellfire. 

**21 minutes to go**

Behind the line, Will, Parry and Butler huddle around Captain Nevill with the rest of their platoon. 

They will be the first to go over. The first line of men to face the fury of the enemy and the mere thought of it threatens to paralyse him with fear. Fear has no place in battle. He has seen is how fear is met. Four boys have already been dragged away for insubordination and their fates will be on par with the one that awaits Will over the trench. If he is to die, he would rather die on his feet. 

“I’ve given all of my platoons this,” Nevill says, holding a dirty football in the air, “the first platoon to get their ball into enemy lines wins a reward.”

Chatter spreads through the men like wildfire. Parry scoffs, “he’s bloody lost it.”

“ _Oi_ , that’s fantastic,” Butler grins, jabbing Will and Parry with his elbows, “like I needed anymore incentive to end the Bosche.” 

Will says nothing, his gaze remains on the Captain who watches the thrilled faces of the boys with a half smile. The ball has letters carved into its skin. 

> _The Great European Cup_  
>  _The Final_  
>  _East Surreys v Bavarians_  
>  _Kick Off at Zero_

**13 minutes to go**

_This is it._

Will and Butler’s line are being called up to take formation in the front. Will watches with his heart in his throat as Parry and Butler cling to each other, ignoring the annoyed glances many passing boys throw them for obstructing the path. 

Parry whispers something in Butler's ear. Butler smiles and whispers back, “soon.” 

Kara flashes in his mind, red hair like fire and eyes of steel, then it is Tom. Tom on the night of Joe and Lauri’s wedding with his warm mouth grazing his neck and his captivating gaze. 

Will glances away to give Parry and Butler some shred of privacy even they are standing in the middle of the down trench. Parry won’t be going over the top like Will and Butler, he will stay firmly positioned along the line with the other machine gunners. They are smiling at each other when Will looks back at them. 

“Schofield,” Parry says. 

“Parry,” he says, feeling a lump form in his throat. 

Apprehension twists in his stomach and wildly, he thinks this might be the last time he ever sees Parry but this is what is all about isn’t it? Those three months of training. It was preparing them for this battle and countless others.

“You three!” Lieutenant Leslie marches towards them, he takes a puff of his cigarette and glares, “does this look like a bloody park? Get in formation! Zero hour is in thirteen minutes!”

Will, Parry and Butler straighten up to salute him. 

“Yes, sir!” They shout in unison. 

Lieutenant Leslie grumbles something and marches off. When he’s out of earshot, Parry turns to Will and holds his hand out. “Good luck, mate,” he says.

Will nods and clasps Parry’s hand, giving it a firm shake.”You too.”

Parry’s grip on his hand tightens as he pulls Will into a hug, patting his back with his other hand. He whispers into Will’s ear, “you look after Butler for me, won’t you? He’s a reckless idiot.”

He chuckles, “I will.”

**9 minutes to go**

The earth shakes and screams, torn apart inch by inch with every shell that falls. Will is crouched against the wall of the trench, gripping his rifle between his knees. Butler clings onto the ladder attached to the steep, dirty slope that leadsup to No Man’s Land. Parry is off somewhere down the line in charge of working the machine guns. 

He thinks of Tom, chasing after the train and demanding Will return or he would jump into the war to drag him out. He thinks of Tom’s eyes, blue and hopeful, under the amber lights of the bathroom as he leaned into Will and asked him if he really thought Tom hated him. He thinks of Joe, some forty miles away between Ovillers and La Boiselle, hailed by gunfire and shellfire on his birthday. He thinks, this time two years ago, they were celebrating his eighteenth in the Round Table with an endless stream of alcohol before they ambled over to Danecroft. 

He has to survive this. He has to return to Rainford — to Nan, to Tom and Joe, to Lauri and her enticing pile of books filled with ancient words, to the decay of Danecroft Castle, to all of it, to _home_.

Another blast. Atkins, a sharp-faced boy of the Public Schools Battalion, poked his head over the lip of the trench eager to race into battle or perhaps he was curious at what lay overhead, for whatever reason, the force of the blast throws him onto the floor of the trench. Over the edge of the trench, huge mounds of dirt fly up into the air, rising hundreds of feet high up before it collapses back in on itself and Will covers his head to shield himself from the raining dirt and rock. 

Atkins lands next to Will, missing him by a few inches. He groans. 

“Fucking hell, are you trying to get yourself killed?” Lieutenant Leslie stands over him, shouting, “you silly little bastard!”

Will shuffles over to Atkins and helps him sit up. He wonders what would be worth risking your life to look over the edge. “Are you okay? Why did you do that?”

“The Hawthorn Ridge,” Atkins says. 

"Pardon?” 

“The Hawthorn Ridge mine!” Butler shouts from his position on the slope, “I don’t blame him, I wanted to take a look too but I didn’t fancy getting my head blown off!” That wide grin is back, “Atkins, how was it?”

Will isn’t sure if Atkins' face is ashen from the blast or the dust that seems to swallow them all in waves. 

“A pillar of flame,” Atkins says, pushing himself to stand. He dips when another explosion sounds a few metres away. He looks down at Will who is still crouched on the ground. A wicked smile takes over Atkins' face, “the Bosche don’t stand a chance.” 

**3 minutes to go**

More explosions. These ones are far bigger than the Hawthorn Ridge mine. They shake some soldiers off the slopes and send rocks the size of heads plunging into the trenches.

Will dodges about half of them and his helmet ( _thank you, Lord)_ shields off the rest. Butler isn’t quite as lucky, a rock slams into his forehead and for a horrifying second Will thinks Butler is dead before the battle even begins but then Butler swears and kicks the rock away. Will lets out a shuddering breath. 

Something will not stop roaring, the sky or the earth or God demanding they end this battle, it doesn’t matter, the battle has not even begun.

**24 seconds to go**

Thunder and wrath and then — _silence_. 

The bombardment has stopped and all that remains is silence and dust. Silence is a vacant, cutting thing. Sharp enough to cut through time and give the illusion it has frozen. Later, much later, he will swear he heard the distant, haunting sound of birdsong. Somewhere to his right, a freckled platoon commander walks up and down the footboard saying, _it’s a walkover._

_This is it. This_ is the moment. The void before the reign of terror that will torment him for the rest of his life.

**zero hour**

The whistle blows. 

His body moves without thought and in the blink of an eye, he has climbed over the trench and onto the vast, broken field of No Man’s Land. There’s nothing up here but a thick, shimmering curtain of mist and snow-white dust twenty feet ahead. Some boys charge forward, rifles raised and roaring with earth as they disappear into the curtain. Other boys, like Will, walk carefully across the scarred land. If it wasn’t for the hefty rifle in his arms, Will could convince himself he was walking through Jade Park. 

He looks around for Butler and he spots him a few feet away with the rifle tipped back against one shoulder as he passes the football to Will. Will catches it under the heel of his boot. 

Butler smiles at him, “c’mon, Scho.”

This could be an afternoon in Jade Park. When all this is over, Butler and Parry can visit Rainford and — Butler screams, his body starts shaking like a ragdoll as dozens of tiny bloodied holes appear across his chest. All around them, many other boys are twirling and falling too and it takes Will a second too late to realise it’s machine gunfire.

“Butler!” Will screams, watching with wide eyes as Butler collapses to the ground.

The Bosche artillery is terrific. It tears up the ground before them. Will moves to run to him but a shell drops nearby and it sends him flying back. The wind has been knocked out of him and he struggles to breathe and he cannot see anything, there’s so much dust and the screaming, _God_ , the screaming it pierces right through him. Will squeezes his eyes shut as coughs wrack his body, convinced the dust has coated his lungs. 

Someone grabs him by the collars of his jacket and yanks him up. 

“Butler,” Will coughs, praying that it’s his friend and he imagined it all. “Oh, my God, Butler, Butler, are you…are you…”

Someone is shouting something at him but Will cannot hear it over the ringing in his ears, their grip on Will’s jacket is tight as they shake him. Will wants to tell them he cannot hear a thing but the dust is clogging up his throat and he can hardly breathe. 

Will opens his eyes to find Lieutenant Leslie is the one holding onto his jacket. He looks like a ghost, covered from head to toe in white dust. 

“…dead!” Leslie shouts.

“Butler,” Will repeats, still coughing, “where’s — where’s Butler…”

Somewhere, a platoon commander’s bellowing orders reach him. “Extend by sections!” 

“Schofield, you bloody idiot!” Leslie glares at him, “Butler is fucking _dead!_ I counted every bullet that went into him and if that didn’t kill him that shell did!”

Will coughs again, rising up onto his knees as Leslie keeps shaking him. He gasps for air but only swallows more dust, “ _no…no…_ ” His ears are ringing as more blasts rip the earth to shreds and the heat of it promises to burn him. “ _Butler_ …”

“He’s dead!” Leslie glances away to spit a wad of blood onto the ground before he continues shouting, “Every second we spend here is a second closer to our own death!” 

Will grips Leslie’s wrists and stares at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. Around them, the world has descended into chaos and vaguely, he wonders if a bullet has already caught Joe or if he’s still in the trenches, enduring that excruciating wait for the whistle. 

_“_ Listen to me, Schofield!” Leslie shakes him again, and dips when a shell plummets somewhere behind him. “The barbed wire is one hundred yards away and just twenty yards from that is the German front line! Now, _get the fuck up_ and go capture Thiepval!”

Leslie lets go of him, picks up a pair of bayonets and disappears into the mist. 

Shaking, Will grabs his rifle and stands up, stumbling slightly as he does. He draws in adeep breath and charges into the storm of dust and bullets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> after that july section, i'm a half expert in the somme now lool. yknow the football challenge by captain nevil is real?? but honestly, the somme is gonna scar scho for a long time, i often see it as his defining battle and his deepest trauma, the battle that changes everything, it's the reason he's so despondent in the film. i'm rambling now, thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> part 5 will be up sooooon and it is the infamous year of 1917 in tom's POV.


End file.
